


In Midnights, In Cups of Coffee

by ChibiSquirt



Series: Switch-verse [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha Steve Rogers, Alpha Tony Stark, Alpha/Alpha romance, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angsty Schmoop, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Everybody has issues okay?, F/M, Hopefully more schmoop than angst, M/M, Multi, Omega Bucky Barnes, Polyamory, Steve Rogers Has Issues, This fic is like a dog turning in circles before going to sleep, Tony Stark Has Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2018-07-26 02:07:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 61,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7556017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiSquirt/pseuds/ChibiSquirt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Steve pulls Tony aside before they’re more than ten feet away from the quinjet, resting one hand on Tony’s shoulder in an old, familiar gesture.  Tony twitches, but doesn’t shrug him off.    </em>
</p><p><em>“Let me get Bucky settled,” Steve pleads, “And let me get a cup of coffee.  Then I want to take the coffee, and you, and </em>not <em>our clothes, and go to bed.”  He smiles, hopeful and, to be honest, a little tremulously, into Tony’s eyes. “Sound good?”</em></p><p>  <em>Tony seems pretty willing to humor him, considering the events of the last 48 hours.  “Sounds great,” he says, taking his sunglasses off, waving them in the air, and then putting them right back on again even though they’re only ten feet away from entering the building.  “I’ll make sure I used the red, white and blue sheets.”</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was originally hoping to do this one for Cap/Iron Man BB, but I thought it didn't match closely enough. So instead I'm just putting it out there. 
> 
> TW: I don't think there's anything graphic in here, but there are panic attacks, and mentions all over the place: references to all the terrible shit that happens to Bucky, including torture and rape; references to internalized gender-bashing; references to childhood trauma; and probably drug use later on, although I haven't gotten there yet. But I rated it T for a reason - pretty much everything except the panic attacks are off-screen - so, I mean, know yourself, but for the most part it should be okay.
> 
> ETA: Fic no longer T, but shouldn't be any more triggery than promised above.

Steve pulls Tony aside before they’re more than ten feet away from the quinjet, resting one hand on Tony’s shoulder in an old, familiar gesture.  Tony twitches, but doesn’t shrug him off.    

“Let me get Bucky settled,” Steve pleads, “And let me get a cup of coffee.  Then I want to take the coffee, and you, and _not_ our clothes, and go to bed.”  He smiles, hopeful and, to be honest, a little tremulously, into Tony’s eyes. “Sound good?”

He’s finding it pretty hard to fight off the urge to pet Tony; that little display of sexual dominance mixed with fight pheromones, earlier, had sent his pulse pounding so hard that Steve’d almost gone off the roof, and all Steve wants now is to curl protectively around the people he loves.  

Unfortunately, the people he loves are all touch-phobic, and, anyway, they can take care of themselves.

Still, Tony seems pretty willing to humor him, considering the events of the last 48 hours.  “Sounds great,” he says, taking his sunglasses off, waving them in the air, and then putting them right back on again, even though they’re only ten feet away from entering the building.  “I’ll make sure I used the red, white and blue sheets.”

Steve winces at the reigned-in hostility of Tony's tone.   _First one to lose their temper loses,_ he thinks, remembering a conversation of a couple months ago.  

Maybe better to go with sincerity, here.  “Please don’t.”  He gives in to temptation, just a bit, running his thumb down Tony’s neck while the rest of his hand stays clasped on shoulder.  Not much, but it’s enough, for now:  Tony looks up, and actually gives half a smile.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up to the smell of coffee and an angry redhead.  Only one of those things is arousing, and unfortunately, it’s not Pepper.

“Where’d Tony go?” is the first thing Steve asks, mostly muzzily.

It does not improve the situation.

“Tony has responsibilities,” Pepper informs him icily, tapping the pointy toe of her shoe on the smooth-tiled floor of Tony's room. “Responsibilities that do not include wild goose chases in Eastern Europe.”

Steve frowns, and wishes he could drink the coffee he smells.  Sadly, the smell seems to be coming from Pepper’s cup, which, judging by her tone, he is not invited to share.   _I think she might be sick of sharing her things with me..._

“I thought the wild goose chase was Tony's idea?”  It was, of course.  Steve has been hunting Bucky, but Tony is the one who hunted _efficiently._ Highly, highly _illegally,_  but he did get results, you could not argue with that.  Less than a month to track the former Commando to Romania:  now, _there's_  an impressive use of illicit resources that they are all going to pretend Tony didn’t access.

Pepper doesn’t appear to care about the distinction.

“Finding Barnes was your idea.  Actually succeeding may have been due to Tony’s intervention, but he certainly didn’t need to go with you on the retrieval.”

That one was _definitely_ Tony’s idea.  Pretty much required, actually.

“And at any rate,” Pepper continues before he can contradict her, “Joining into a _Heat_ with Barnes was most _certainly_ not Tony’s idea.”  She spits the words like broken glass.

This might, it occurs to Steve through the muzzy haze, be the root of the problem.

“Pepper…  Bucky was a Beta, the last I knew,” he says carefully, wishing _again_ for the coffee.  “The Heat was a surprise to all of us.”

Pepper smiles bitterly, glares, and doesn’t respond.

“We had to call some of those plays on the fly.”

She looks out the window, and sips her coffee, still not acknowledging his words, although he can see that she recognizes the truth of them.

Steve stares at her, stumped, and fishes around for something he can add.  He just doesn’t understand why this, _this_ of all things, is what she has a problem with, especially since…  “He called you,” Steve points out.  “He said, ‘Yes, I’m in, no wait, let me call Pepper,’ and then when you weren’t okay with it, _he left._ And everyone was okay with that - in retrospect, it probably worked out better -”

Pepper slams her paper coffee cup down in a way that indicates she wishes it were china, then leaves the penthouse without another word.  Steve watches the paper cup for a long time, after she leaves.

There are hand-prints burned into the side of it.

 

* * *

 

Steve wants to reassure Pepper, but that’s difficult to do when he doesn’t know what’s really bothering her.

Here’s what Steve _does_ know:

1\.  Pepper is passionately in love with Tony.

  * 1a:  So is Steve.



2\.  Pepper is fiercely protective of Tony.

  * 2a:  So is Steve.
  * 2b:  But less than Pepper.



Steve knows, deep down, that, when push comes to shove, Tony can take care of himself.  Probably Pepper also knows this, but for her, it's different.  

Steve’s out there with Tony, and he’s seen it first-hand: for him, the knowledge has an immediacy that grounds him.   _Pepper’s_ closest exposure to Tony’s survival skills, as far as Steve knows, comes through a television screen or a first-hand account, and either way, it’s not enough to internalize, not enough to jump the speed-bump between _intellectual information_ and _gut-deep acceptance._

When Pepper worries, there’s no voice inside of her fighting it off to let her know Tony will be okay.

On the other hand, Steve knows something else, too...

3\.  Pepper was the one who told him he was free to pursue Tony in the first place, who told him it would not interfere with her and Tony’s relationship.

  * 3a:  Sometimes people lie to make their loved ones happy.



 

* * *

 

Bucky’s room is an actual room:  The walls are blue with a decorative decal of ducks around the ceiling, there’s a wicker rocker in the corner, and the near wall is lined with bookshelves - bolted to the wall, and all empty.  Steve walks in, then immediately takes a step back out and checks the hallway again.

But no.  Right room.  “The Hell, Tony?”

Bucky smirks at him from the _twin bed what the Hell, Tony_ with _**Toy Story** themed sheets. _

(Steve can _feel his brain break.)_

“Stark got a kid somewhere you don’t know about?” Bucky asks.  He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, holding the side of the mattress (a nice thick one, at least) with both hands, one on each side of his spread-legged lap.  Buzz and Woody's faces are crinkled up around his hands, but there aren't any holes punched in the sheets, at least.

“You know, up until this second I wouldn’t even have considered the thought,” Steve replies, staring in bafflement around the room.  There is nothing it can be except a nursery, though.  He enters slowly, pulling the rocking chair after him to face Bucky.  He sits tentatively, not entirely sure the wicker can take his weight, but it does so with only a little groaning.  “How are you holding up?” he asks Bucky.

Buck shrugs.  “Okay.”

Steve waits.  

Bucky looks at the bed, tracing the dome-shaped outline of Buzz’s helmet.  “There wasn’t much damage from the Heat,” he mutters.  

Steve flinches.  

“...and it all healed overnight.”

“There shouldn’t have been any,” Steve says softly.  “I’m sorry.  I thought I was being more careful.”  

Even when he’s trying his hardest, he can’t help but to hurt his friend.

Bucky shrugs again.  “Better than it coulda been,” he offers.  “Better by a lot than it has been in the past.”

Steve rocks the chair with a shove of his legs.  “What, you mean when Hydra was raping you?” he asks before he thinks better of it.

Although maybe he wouldn’t have. Sometimes things need to be said.

“Yeah, loads better than that,” Bucky agrees, grinning at him, and he’s struck by the humor in it, and by how, even now, Bucky’s seeing his distress and trying to lighten it.  

He shakes his head.  “I don’t deserve you,” he tells Bucky seriously.  

His friend shakes his own head right back, though.  “You dumbass,” he says without rancor, "it’s me who doesn’t deserve _you.”_

They fall into silence, broken only by the rhythmic squeak of the rocking chair going back and forth, back and forth.  Bucky moves his hands from the edge of the bed to his lap, laying them, palm-up, on the back of his legs.  The fingers relax, forming gentle cups, and Steve realizes it’s a meditation pose:  somewhere along the way, Bucky has learned how to keep himself calm.  

Maybe he’ll teach Steve one day...

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, and Bucky lifts his head, curious.  

“‘Bout what?”

“About…”  It’s hard to say.  “About…  Look, you said that Alphas aren’t…”

Bucky squints at him.

“Aren’t something you’re interested in.  And I guess I just…  Natasha said she ‘hacked your system’, that you were able to decide, but…  if you _weren’t,_ and I…”

“She was right,” Bucky interrupts _(thank God)._ “Pain can override Heat, shut it down.”  He wiggles his right hand where Natasha had broken his fingers.  "That's fine now, too."

Steve doesn’t say anything.  

Bucky swallows and keeps going, shifting his weight on the ridiculous bed as he tucks a piece of hair behind his ear.  “So no,” he continues, “You aren’t like the Hydra handlers who raped me.  Because, one -” He holds up his right index finger in front of him like he’s scolding Steve, and Steve has to suppress a shiver at the moment of ancient familiarity.  “- I wanted you there.  I couldn’t remember much, but I could remember that I could trust you, and that was all I was looking for right then.  And two -”  A second finger joins the first.  “- even if I couldn’t _remember_ anything, I could _still_ tell I could trust you, just based on your behavior right then.”  

Steve remembers, piercingly, the agony of seeing Bucky's spine slumping as he fell into the heady languor of Heat, the feel of his heart racing to accommodate the Heat-scent Buck was putting out, the uncharacteristically hopeless look in Bucky’s eyes when he first opened the door to Steve, and the breath-stealing fear that he would do something to hurt the first man he’d ever loved…

“You cared about not hurting me,” Bucky explains, voice soft, and Steve realizes with a jolt that, in his way, Bucky’s remembering the same things.  

“Oh,” Steve says, touched and breathless.  

“Plus, number three,” Bucky adds with an affected carelessness that Steve remembers from long, long ago, _“You_ fuckin’ waited for me to be in Heat.  Those other assholes just took me whenever they wanted.”

...It takes Steve a moment to focus through the _blinding red haze of rage_ to look at Bucky’s face again.  

“Oh,” he repeats, not able to find words right this minute.  

Bucky coughs. “Yeah,” he says. “Hey, if you’re going to dump Fight all over my room, you can leave and come back.”

Steve starts to apologize - starts to say he won’t do that anymore - and then realizes that the more of this he hears, the more likely he is to put out Fight all over again.  So he changes what he’s planning to say to, “Want to go out on the roof?”

Bucky stares at him like he’s an idiot.  

“Wind’ll take any Scent away,” Steve explains.  

“Beggin' your pardon, Captain,” FRIDAY interrupts, “But Sergeant Barnes is not permitted to leave this suite of rooms.”

Steve bristles.  “On whose orders?” he demands.

“On Mr. Stark’s.”  FRIDAY’s a nice lady; she sounds genuinely distressed.  Mind, Steve’s noticed she’s a lot more anxious than JARVIS in general, so that’s not unusual for her, but it’s still a small comfort.  

“I’ll talk to him,” Steve groans, looking an apology at Bucky.

Bucky shrugs, but cuts his eyes away in that pleased way he’d always gotten when he managed to distract Steve from getting into a fight, and belatedly, Steve realizes what he’s done.  

“It - I.”  Steve closes his eyes, swallows, and tries again.  “You’re my friend, Bucky.  I didn’t come get you to _arrest_ you, and the Tower isn’t a _prison.”_

“It should be,” Bucky says, keeping his eyes away, not looking at Steve as he talks.  He presses his lips together until the skin around them is white, then licks along the bottom one before speaking again.   “I still have these triggers, these… fuckin'  _code-words..._ in my brain, Steve.  Someone catches me with the right phrases, the right tone…”  He looks up, only meeting Steve’s gaze for a second before glancing away again.  “...I’m not me any more.  I'm not in control.”

Steve rubs absently at the ache in his chest.  “You’re a good man, Bucky Barnes.  You shouldn’t be locked away like an animal.”  He looks around at the pale blue walls of the nursery, at the cheerful greens of Buzz’s suit and the over-large eyes of Woody, and gestures to the white-painted shelving.  “You don’t even have any _books_ on your shelves.”

Bucky’s eyebrows shoot up, and he fishes a tablet out of the bedcovers, holding it up for Steve to see.  “Stark gave me two thousand dollars to order books with.  I chose the used ones with free shipping for the most part, they should start arriving in a week.”  Steve’s surprise must show on his face, because Bucky smirks at him again.  “Your man’s bein' pretty generous, considering.”  

Steve gives up, laughing softly and blushing, looking at his feet.  “Considering?” he asks pointedly.

Bucky grins the same grin he’d used in fifth grade, right before he punch Timmy Sullivan in the face.  “Yeah,” he says, _“Considerin’_ I’m not lettin’ that asshole look at my arm.”

“Oh _no,”_ Steve moans, face falling.  “Bucky, he’ll be _insufferable!”_

He sounds like he’s complaining, but Bucky in any form will know him well enough to read the happiness in the whine.  

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees, “Sounds like a real problem for whatever poor sonofabitch is dating that guy.  Good luck to _that_ poor slob.”

“Oh, _nooo,”_ Steve repeats, kicking out with one leg to bump gently against Bucky’s shin, setting the wicker chair creaking again.  

Bucky kicks back, snickering.  “So how long has _that_ been goin’ on?” he asks, smiling a soft, pleased sort of smile at having distracted Steve.  (Mostly distracted, anyway.)

“About a week,” Steve admits, and watches his friend’s eyes pop out.

“A _week,”_ Bucky says, and makes a disbelieving, up-and-down gesture at himself.  “And the first thing you do is go drag _me_ into it?”

Steve shrugs, shoulders coming up around his ears.

“So..."  Bucky's frowning at him. "...were you tryin’ to break it off before it got started?” he speculates.

“No!”  Steve knows his voice is defensive, he knows it, but he can’t get that note out of it.  “It was Tony’s idea.”

“Yeah?”  Bucky looks around the room at the duckies stenciled up top, probably not because the stencil is interesting.  “Then Tony’s liked you for a lot longer than a week.”

Steve’s restless foot pauses, and the rocking chair stills.  

Bucky breathes out harshly, and looks away again.  “Oh,” he says flatly.

Steve bites back the urge to say _sorry,_ because he’s _not_ sorry, damn it.

And then Bucky - who, no matter what he claims about triggers, _is_ and _always will be_ Steve’s best friend - says, “Go find him.”

“What?”  Steve’s head comes up like a gazelle scenting a lion.

“Go find him,” Bucky repeats, “Tell him about - tell him about me and Alphas.  That we ain’t gettin’ back together any time soon.  Tell him you’re stickin’ around.”

Steve…  doesn’t say anything.

“Don’t _fuck it up,_ Stevie.”  Bucky throws a pillow at his face, and Steve lets it hit him.  “Jesus, you always were terrible with dating.  Go tell your boyfriend that you’re still his boyfriend.”

Steve nods, but doesn’t move yet.  “You don’t… mind?” he asks.  “If I tell him about - about what happened to you?”

Bucky pauses, but pets Buzz’s face again and shakes his head.  “Nah,” he says.  “I figure he’ll need to know.”  He flicks a glance up at Steve, then back down again.  “You tellin’ his girl?  What's-her-name, Pep?”

“Pepper,” Steve corrects.  “I was going to, if you say it’s alright.  She, uh…”   _Handprints burned into a coffee cup._  “...She probably needs to hear it more than Tony does, right now.”

Bucky nods, not looking up as he throws his second pillow at Steve’s face again.  (It hits perfectly, in spite of the apparent lack of aiming.)  Steve doesn’t move, though; he's still too worried to leave, yet.

Bucky rolls his eyes, plants his feet on the ground, and stands to collect his ammunition.  “I’m not gonna melt, Steve,” he says, quietly picking up a pillow from off to Steve’s right.  Steve watches him bend, the curve of his back and the fall of his hair - his fucking _mouth -_  heartbreakingly beautiful in the midmorning sunlight.

Just like always.

“I’m not gonna go crazy, sittin' in here.  I’m not gonna be bitter or anythin’ like that.  I know there’s plenty of people out there still gunnin' for me, and I know there’s plenty in my brain that can still go off like a bomb.  I’m _fine._ I’m even _safe,_ for once, which is - it’s amazing, Steve.  You don't know, you can't, but it's been _years_ since I've been safe.   _Just that_ is...  It's all I want, right now.”  

He turns, and hands the second pillow to Steve just like he once handed over the shield.  “So _either -_ go reassure your man, go back to work, go stop evil, and get on with your life, _or.”_ He stops and raises his eyebrows significantly, and Steve fights off the worrying twinge of suspicion that he might be threatening him.  

“Or…?”

“Or…”  Bucky grins, bouncing his eyebrows mischievously, “...be prepared to defend yourself.”

He raises the other pillow with mock menace.

Well.  

In _that_ case, then.

Steve has always been prepared to defend himself.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

“You need more pillows,” Steve reports later, leaning back against Tony’s workbench.

Tony doesn’t look up from where he’s fiddling with - Steve looks closer- what appears like some kind of motherboard.  “Why do I need more pillows?” he asks, only he asks it around the screwdriver he's holding in his mouth, so it comes out, “‘Why ‘oo I fmeed fmore tillows?”

“Bucky and I broke ‘em,” Steve says, still too pleased with the visit to be actually repentant, although he tries to put some apology in his voice.

Tony’s back stiffens, and he pulls his hand away from the electronic in a gesture that looks instinctive, but must have been practiced - because you want your hands steady when working on that scale, as Tony has told him in the past - and Steve rushes to explain.

“Pillow fight!” he says hastily, throwing his arms up like he’s bracing against a blow.  “I was moping, he wanted to distract me!  That’s all!”

Tony turns around, regarding Steve with an opaque look of evaluation.  He folds his arms across his chest, leaning against the workbench opposite the one Steve is taking up.  He opens his mouth, then pauses, and Steve just has time to catch the slight quirk at the corner of Tony’s mouth before he asks, “So why haven’t _we_ had any pillow fights?”

Oh-ho.

Steve… _leans,_ just a bit.  He rests more of his weight on the bench, crossing one leg over the other, and folds his arms across his chest in a way which he knows makes his biceps pop.  Tony’s eyes, as predicted, flick down to his arms, widen, and then _pause_ just a second before snapping back to his face.

Steve smirks.  “I’m guess it’s because we haven’t spent enough time in bed,” he tells Tony pointedly.

Tony swallows.

“Is what you’re working on right now important?” Steve asks thoughtfully, feeling a tiny frown pulling between his eyebrows, the mirror of the one which is, almost always, on Tony’s face.

(Tony doesn’t smile a lot.  It’s one of the things Steve would really like to fix.)

“Not that important,” Tony answers him, looking hopeful.  His voice is husky, and Steve smiles internally.

“How not important?” he asks thoughtfully, and Tony hastily fumbles to turn off the soldering iron.

 

* * *

 

Steve is lounging on his stomach, naked in Tony’s extravagant bed, when his phone rings.  Or, someone’s phone rings, anyway; Tony finds it, looks at it, and throws it hard enough at Steve’s butt to make a smacking sound when it hits, so Steve assumes it’s his.

“Hello?” he asks, answering without looking at the display.  That would have involved opening his eyes wider than a slit, and he’s too busy enjoying the afterglow to want to do that.

“Hello, Steve,” comes the irritated voice of Maria HIll.  “I can’t help but notice I haven’t seen or heard from you for _four days._  Is everything alright?”

“Hmm?  Oh, yeah, it’s great,” he answers, settling back down into the covers.

He can hear Maria scowling.  He shouldn’t be able to hear a facial expression, but it’s Maria Hill, and there isn’t really a limit on the things she can make happen.  “Then do you mind getting back up here and leading your team?” she asks testily.  “It’s bad enough Natasha headed off for parts unknown."  Natasha's and Maria's friendship is one of the most beautiful, frightening things in Steve's life right now.  "Then you disappeared, too, and Rhodey got called in to escort Air Force One for the next two weeks.”  Maria's voice is fretful under the irritation, and Steve realizes that they had actually worried her with this stunt.  He feels bad about that, because Maria's primary concern really is the safety of the world, and that's not something Steve ever takes lightly.  On the other hand...

Steve feels the bed dent as Tony sits down by his feet, and he nudges the other man with his bare foot.  Tony, taking the hint, runs his hand up the back of Steve’s calves, first one, then the other.  “I’m taking a week,” Steve tells Maria firmly, nudging Tony with his toe again.

There’s a quick hiss of indrawn of breath behind him, and Steve makes a beckoning motion with his free left hand.  Tony moves around, causing the bed to shift under Steve, coming up the bed to settle down beside him as Maria finishes off her mini-rant on the subject of Team Leaders who duck out for a week without telling anyone or telling them where he’s going or leaving contact information (which is ridiculous, Steve had had his cell phone on), and who really should be taking this whole thing more seriously, _Rogers!_

Steve opens his eyes to exchange glances with Tony (Steve's guilty, Tony's amused), then winks and leans over to press a kiss on Tony’s cheek; Tony’s answering smile lights up the whole damned room.  “Maria,” Steve says, voice solemn, in contrast to the dancing happiness he’s sure is in his eyes, “Tony found Bucky.  We brought him in last night.”

Hill gasps.   _"You brought in the Winter Soldier?!”_

He can hear her gearing up to go on another rant - Hill rants are fundamentally impressive, and potentially receiving two of them in the same phone call says something about the severity of the situation - but Steve cuts her off with a growl and a roll of his eyes.  “No,” he says harshly, “We brought in _Bucky._ Who will be staying here at the Tower - _not_ at the Upstate HQ - precisely because he _isn’t_ the Winter Soldier anymore.”  

Maria is quiet for a moment, then surprises him by saying, “Sorry, Steve,” her voice meek.  Steve pulls the phone away from his ear and frowns at it, because last he checked, Maria Hill didn’t know what the word _meek_ even _meant._

“Maria?”

“You’re taking a week,” she says, now sounding flustered, which is even more confusing.  “I’ll just…  I’ll let the team know.”

“...Thank you?”  He's missing something.  What is he missing?

“You’re welcome.”  She rallies, sounding a bit more like herself as she adds, “I imagine you’ll be quite busy getting him all settled in."  Her voice sharpens microscopically, because nothing throws Hill for long.  "Please let me know if you're going to need more time.”

Steve doesn’t know what’s going on, but he’s pretty sure that somewhere along the line there was a miscommunication.  “I think he’s pretty settled,” he says absently, then mock-glares at his boyfriend.  “Although Tony put him in the nursery, which - did you know the Tower has a nursery?”

Tony cracks up beside him, and Steve rolls his eyes at him again.  Maria says, “Steve?” in a tone of confusion, so she probably didn’t know there was a nursery, either.

“So I’m probably going to work on getting him a bed sized for a grown-up, but other than that, he seems to be doing alright,” Steve finishes.  “He’s not letting anyone look at the arm yet, though.”

Tony huffs beside him, then sticks his lower lip out in a pout that Steve should probably not find as adorable as he does.  On the other hand, pretty much anything Tony does while shirtless is adorable.  It's the belly.

“Is someone else there?” Maria asks, the _listening to our confidential phone call?_ bit going unsaid, but still heard.  Steve hears footsteps over the line, and figures that she's given up on a productive conversation and left her office for the time being.

“Hi, Hill,” Tony says, and Steve gives him another irritated look before putting the phone on speakerphone.  “Oooh, much better, Steven, now I can eavesdrop _much_ more easily.”

“You’re such a pain,” Steve complains, tossing the phone down on the bed between them.  Having freed up his hands, he braces himself up and over enough that he can stick his tongue in Tony’s ear.

Tony’s eyes cross, but he keeps his voice admirably level when he asks Hill, “Anything else you need right now?  Steve’s going to be talking to Barnes, anything you want him to pass along?”  Steve bites Tony’s earlobe, and Tony’s whole body jerks, but he’s only a little breathless as he adds, “Hydra hideout locations?  Sniping tips?  Haircare advice?”

“Hydra locations and any code-phrases, please,” Maria says, voice off-balance in a way that suggests she’s working on something else at the same time.

Steve licks around the shell of Tony’s ear, and finally Tony loses the ability to speak, going weak and shivery.  Steve puffs air over the ear and pulls back, pleased.  

Time for the next step.  

It's only a little terrifying.  Natasha already knows, so do Sam, and Wanda and Viz.  It's not  _impossible._

But Steve really likes Maria Hill, and if she sounds disgusted, it's going to hurt a lot.

He takes a deep breath, then begins.  “Hey, Maria,” he says, pushing into Tony’s shoulder.

 _“What,_ Steve?” Maria asks, sounding harassed.  From the other side of the phone, a loud _clang-clang-clang-THUMP_ sounds, right before she hisses, “Damnit!”  Steve elects to graciously not point out that he can hear her dropping things in the kitchen.

“Congratulate us,” Steve tells her, a broad, shy smile spreading across his face at the soft and unfocused expression Tony’s wearing.  

“Congratulate… you and Tony?”  He can _hear_ her shrug.  “Well done.  Bringing in Barnes -”

“Not that,” Steve cuts her off, and Tony’s smiling, now, he's realized what's going on and he’s so _happy,_ Steve is _so glad_ he’s doing this, even if his heart is a tight knot of hummingbirds all trying to get out of his chest…  “Tony and I are dating now.”

There’s dead silence on the line for a minute - a minute in which Tony finds Steve’s hand with his own, squeezing tightly - and then Maria says, “Huh.”

Steve feels something curl up and die in his stomach, because that doesn't sound good, and maybe their lives are about to get a lot harder...

She seems to snap out of whatever line of thought she initially had, though, instead snapping, “Wait, is this going to affect your working together?”

Tony’s eyes are wide with excitement; Steve’s eyes are wide with nerves.  He wants to twist his hand so that he can interlace his fingers with Tony’s, but they’re both squeezing so hard already, he thinks he might break a few of Tony’s bones if he does.

“...Not after this week, which you have graciously given us off?” Tony offers, smiling weakly at Steve.

Maria snorts in exasperation, the same, familiar exasperation that she's always had for them and their hijinks.   _It hasn't changed._

“Well then,” she answers, and now her voice is warm again, and Steve feels himself relax, feels like he can start breathing again.  “Enjoy the rest of your week, congratulations - _and_ congratulations on the Barnes thing - and I’ll see you _both_ back here in four days.  I’m scheduling a team meeting that morning at 9 a.m.  Don’t be late.”  

Steve swallows the lump in his throat, and realizes that his eyes are stinging.  “Thanks, Maria,” he says quietly.

“For what?” she asks fondly, and then hangs up before he’s finished the surprised little giggle that bursts out of him.  He looks down at the phone, and laughs again.  

“She’s okay,” he says, surprised.  Smiling, he looks up at Tony, who’s looking at him…  

...God, Steve doesn’t even know how to describe the look on Tony’s face.  It’s amused, it’s surprised, it’s happy, it’s even a little afraid…  Like a kid who was told he’d be getting an “old car” for his sixteenth birthday, only to be given the keys to a fifty-six Corvette

Steve laughs a third time, but then he doesn’t really stop.  Short, stuttering _heh’s_ burst out of him like hiccoughs, until they change, and then they’re not really laughs anymore, they’re sobs.  “Oh God,” Steve says, and tries to stop.  He holds his breath, but it doesn’t slow them down any; instead, they just pile up and burst out all at once, like children playing sardines overwhelming the door of a closet.  He tries again, holding his breath, but it busts outwards again until he’s gasping and leaking, his _face_ is leaking, tears building in his eyes and stinging as they work their way out and down.  “Sorry, Tony,” Steve says, breath hitching, “It’ll stop in a moment.  It will, it’ll stop -”

Tony makes an alarmed noise, patting at his shoulders with wide eyes.  

“Sorry!  Sorry, sorry!”  Steve gasps and rubs at his face, first one cheek, then the other, but the more he wipes away tears, the more they pile out, just like the more he tries to be quiet, be still, the more he shakes and sucks in air with awful, moaning noises like a cow that needs to be milked.  “I promise I’m trying to stop, I am - Sorry, sorry -”

Tony scoots in closer to him, winding his arm around Steve’s shoulders.  “It’s okay,” he says, but his eyes are wide and scared, and Steve feels a new flush of shame wash over him.  “It’s okay, Steve - I.  I… get it, I think?  I think.  It’ll be okay, anyway,” he finishes quickly, and then runs his hand, soothingly, up and down Steve’s back, which should help, but doesn’t, because it reminds Steve of nothing so much as his ma.

The chain reaction doesn't stop, and all he can do is try not to meet Tony’s eyes as he sobs, harder and harder, unable even to say what’s causing it - relief, and adrenaline, and the events of the last week all swirling together in a mix of _too much._ “Sorry,” he apologizes, over and over, as his nose runs into Tony’s impossible-thread-count sheets, and every time he does, Tony pats his back and tells him it’s okay, he’s here, he loves Steve, he’s not going anywhere, _it’s okay…_

 

* * *

 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Tony asks, sitting back down beside Steve in the same place he’d sat when Maria called.  He has something on his lap, and Steve turns and sits up to see a bowl with wet towels in it.  Tony wrings one out and sets the bowl on the floor, then, tentatively, scoots over towards Steve.  “May I?” he asks, gesturing with the washcloth, and Steve nods, gratefully.  

Tony presses it gently against his face, at first, not even moving it, just warming the skin with the heat from the water, and it feels so good, even though it stings, that Steve feels a fresh round of tears welling up.  He closes his eyes hurriedly, and Tony moves the cloth, blotting at the lids.

Steve licks his lips.  “Thanks,” he says, feeling the shame pool in his stomach like a rock.

“Hey, no,” Tony says, voice gentle.  “No problem, this is - this is predictable.  This is okay, this happens.  Everybody has this sometimes, right?”

“Do they?” Steve asks bleakly.

“They do,” Tony says firmly.  He flips the cloth to the other eye, turning it so that the warmest part is what touches Steve’s face.  ‘I do, anyway.  Maybe a different form, but…”  

He pulls the cloth away, picking up the bowl to switch out, and Steve opens his eyes to watch him.  

“I’m not…”  Tony’s eyes dart away from Steve’s face, then focus downward.  “I’m not okay, Steve.  You should know that about me, should have known that before we got started, sorry about that…  I’m -”  He hesitates, licks his lips, gaze darting around the room the same way Steve has seen so many times before:  in the lab, in meetings, in press conferences...

Tony’s cautious with personal truths.  He always looks for a way out before using them.

“I don’t sleep,” Tony starts, and washes Steve’s left cheek.  “I stay up late, a lot - _often,_ I would use the word _often_ here - because going to bed means giving up, giving in, and I hate that, I’ve always hated it.”  He switches to the right cheek.  “You know Pepper wants me to give it all up?”

“Give all what up?” Steve asks dully, closing his eyes again.

“Being Iron Man,” Tony answers with a rustle Steve can identify, even with his eyes closed, as a dismissive shrug.  “The Suits.  Fighting evil.”  He leans away to pick up the bowl and rinse the washcloth in it.  “She worries,” Tony adds, as if that were an excuse, as if it makes it better.  “Anyway.  After - after the… you know… the Chitauri…  I went a little overboard.  Built… well.  You don’t need the number.  A lot of suits.”  The hot towel is on his neck, now, sliding downward along the muscles behind his ears, first one side, then the other, wiping away tension.  “I blew them up, for her, but I…”  

Steve can hear the swallow.  

“I can’t -”  Tony’s breath hitches, and Steve opens his eyes wide, shocked, at the sound.  “I can’t _not_ have the suits,” Tony explains, _apologizes, God,_ letting his free hand rest against Steve’s chest.  “I can’t do it, I can’t go around without that - that _protection -”_

“You don’t have to,” Steve says, reassuring, covering Tony’s hand with his own.  “Tony, no!  No one could ask you to give that up!”

Tony’s expression turns sardonic, and, okay, that was a stupid thing to say, but Steve still shakes his head stubbornly.  

“People have legitimately tried to _kill you,_ Tony.  If you told me you had an Iron Man suit hiding in the closet right now, then, honestly, I’d be thrilled to hear it.”

“Oh.”  Tony’s eyes dart to the side, and he smiles weakly.  “Well, uh…  It’s not in the _closet,_ exactly…”

Steve laughs wetly, and leans his forehead forward to rest on Tony’s so that the other man’s eyes blur together into one.  

“I drink too much,” Tony whispers.  “I mean, Rhodey sat me down, and we talked about it - it’s better - but I still drink too much.”

Steve doesn’t say anything.

“Sometimes…”  Tony’s voice is even quieter, now, a mere thread of a thing.  “...sometimes I don’t know where I am.  I look up, and all I’ll see is…”  He shakes his head, temples rocking back and forth against Steve’s.  “I’m not okay, Steve.  Far from it.”

Pressure on his hand makes Steve look down, and there’s Tony, twining their fingers together the same way Steve had wanted to earlier.  

“We can be broken together,” Tony says firmly.  

It takes some effort, but Steve manages a smile.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is 90% composed of boys being boys together. For the purposes of this summary, Natasha and Wanda are boys.

 

Steve spends the next three days going back and forth between Tony and Bucky.  

It’s less fun than it sounds.

 

* * *

 

He tries, but fails, to convince Bucky to let Tony examine the arm.  “He wouldn’t _remove_ it, Bucky -”

“- Yes I would -”

“- we can start with just _scanning_ it to make sure it’s _not going to explode!”_

Obstinate shrug, tightly crossed arms.  Lower lip stuck out in a pout, god _damn it!_   “If it were gonna explode, it prob’ly woulda done it by now.”

“Unless it’s triggered by removal,” Tony suggests.

Bucky smiles thinly.  “Unless that,” he agrees pointedly.

Which is when Steve realizes that Tony is _never getting that arm._

* * *

 

He acquires, as promised, a bed which is not twin-size for Bucky.  It’s a California king, instead, and Tony sulks the whole time because they don’t make ridiculous, childish sheets for California kings.  (Steve quietly doesn't tell him that they do, actually, because adults can - and do - spend their money on whatever they want.)

 

* * *

 

He dutifully works with Bucky to create a “care package” of data for Maria Hill: thirty-nine HYDRA bases - only seventeen of which, he will learn later, Maria or SHIELD knew about - fifteen accounts - he claims the contents of one of those for Bucky’s use, which both Maria and Friday agree is fair - _one hundred and eighty-five_ weapons caches, and an entire book’s-worth of passcodes, all carefully jotted down in Steve’s neat handwriting.

“Anything else you can think of, Buck?” Steve asks finally, setting the pen aside and unobtrusively massaging the cramps out of his hand.

Bucky shrugs in a way which doesn’t mean _no._

“Bucky,” Steve says chidingly, raising his eyebrows, but Bucky meets his disapproving gaze calmly.

“The rest of it…  They’re all closed down, now.  And ain’t no good to anybody to go poking a sleeping dragon.”

And no matter what Steve says or how he presses, Bucky refuses to budge from that answer.

 

* * *

 

And he has his first real, post-getting-together fight with Tony.

“He’s not a fucking _prisoner,_ Tony, he should be allowed to open a window!”

“None of my windows open, they’re industrial glass, anti-sniper protocol, and anyway _yes he is, a prisoner is EXACTLY what he is!”_ Tony’s arms are folded, his back straight, and god, Steve is never going into his workshop again, because this is where they _always have fights._

Tony spins away from him, fisting his hands in his own hair and pulling until it stands even more straight up than it usually does  “Look, Steve - I get it, I really do.”  Steve can tell that Tony is struggling to keep his voice level, and remembers, guiltily, that the two of them tend to put out Fight at each other.  There’s a chemical hood in the corner, so Steve walks over and turns it on, leaning against the glass door.  He closes his eyes and concentrates on breathing slowly and steadily, and it does help, some.  

He’s facing into the hood, so he has to rely on hearing to know that Tony sighs and turns back, following him across the room.  “Look...  He’s your friend - I _get_ that.  If it were Rhodey, I’d be fighting tooth and nail to get him everything he could possibly desire.”

 _It’s not the desires that are the problem,_ Steve thinks.  Bucky’s voiced surprisingly few _wants._ It’s the _needs_ Steve worries about:  fresh air, companionship…  

...and hope.

He doesn’t think Bucky has _any_ of those.

“But what you have to consider is that I’m responsible for the safety of everyone in the building.”  Tony holds up a hand to keep Steve quiet while he finishes his thought.  “Friday can monitor all day long, but the fact is, if Barnes manages to get out of his room, he can be anywhere in the building inside of five minutes, and we both know it.  He can be gone completely inside of ten.  He can be loose and doing God knows what, and -”  He raises his voice and shouts over Steve’s incipient objections to that implication.  “- and _Pepper Potts lives in this building!”_

Steve breathes into the hood, chest heaving harder than it does when running a marathon, and doesn’t say anything.

Because he knows damned well, there’s nothing he can say that can match that.

 

* * *

 

The make-up sex is not what he’s expecting.  He was thinking it would be passionate and fiery, full of all the anger and frustration they’ve been carrying since the fight.

Instead, it’s tender and aching, careful, and _full of care._ They touch each other gently, each press of the hand, the lip, the hip, and more saying, _you know I still love you, right?  We’re good?  Do you know how much you mean to me?_

It’s sweet, and loving, and better than he could have possibly dreamed, and afterwards, he falls asleep with his arms and heart both full of Tony.

 

* * *

 

Tony goes with him when he heads to the Upstate HQ later that week.  They’re most of the way there in Tony’s convertible - Steve’s bike is sitting in the back seat, making Steve cringe at the thought of all the dirt and oil getting on Tony’s leather - when Steve asks Tony to pull off of I-87.

“We are still twenty minutes out, and I have been up since 4:30 this morning, and we are supposed to be there in 40 minutes, so _no,_ I am _not pulling over,_ it is _not happening -”_

“We’ll just be late, then,” Steve says, unconcerned, waving his hand in the air stream and smiling in the morning sun.

“Oh my god, I don’t even know you!”  Tony’s eyes are wide as he pulls across three lanes of traffic to take the exit to one of those long, curvy, back-country roads which is two lanes, occasionally three, paved, poor visibility, and beautiful foliage.  His brakes shriek as Tony comes to a stop at the sign and looks at Steve incredulously.  “You - are you secretly Loki in disguise?  Who is this person sitting in my car right now?!”

“I’m not that bad,” Steve says, grinning in what he hopes is an adorable fashion.  "Go north."  Tony just sputters and grumbles until Steve points with his right hand to indicate which way North is.

Two miles later, they’re pulling into Marybeth's, a diner that Steve discovered right after Ultron happened: pissed off, needing to be anywhere except around his fellow Avengers, he'd steamed out on his motorbike, eventually pulling into the sort of small-diner-cum-gas-station one can only find in small towns.  He'd stopped for fuel - for the bike and for himself - and been hooked on the sort of quality plain cooking that only comes when you hand-make everything.  Since Marybeth's is convenient to the trip to and from the Upstate HQ, he makes a point, now, of stopping in whenever he can.  

Today, he picks up an order of old-fashioned, hand-crafted pastries: danishes and cake doughnuts and - “Oh god, are those cream puffs?”  Tony snaps his fingers greedily, eyes lighting up behind his designer sunglasses.  “Gimme!”

Even better, Tony also forgives him for being hyper-mysterious about a _doughnut run,_  because he picked up two cups of coffee while he was getting the doughnuts.  

Steve passes over the coffee before actually opening the car-door.  (Earlier this morning, he'd had fun hopping over the door, which had the interesting side effect of giving Tony a hard on for the firsts three miles of their trip.  Tony had grumbled about it with a sarcastic, _thank you, Steve,_  but also seemed pretty happy about it, so Steve was already planning when he'd get to do it again.)He settles the pastry boxes carefully on his lap before closing the door.  Tony pointedly doesn’t start the car until Steve’s fastened his seatbelt, and Steve rolls his eyes, but complies.

It didn't take very long to do the pastry pickup, because Steve had called in the order ahead of time last night, so they’re back on the road in less than five minutes.  But, “No, don’t get back on the highway,” he objects as Tony goes to pull out, and Tony sends him an eyerolling glare in return.  “Go north on this one, it’ll get us there.”

“Will it get us there on _time?”_ Tony asks, snarky (but less so than normal because he has coffee and a cream puff.)  He's pulling out and turning right, anyway, so this is pretty laid back for him.

“Should be close,” Steve says thoughtfully.  

They make it there on time.  With doughnuts.  

“You’re still lucky we aren’t late,” Tony grumbles, carrying Steve’s coffee for him since Steve’s hands are full of sweet, delicious pastry.

Steve gives him his best Captain America smile from behind his shades.  “We brought the doughnuts,” he points out.  “No matter what time we got here, we wouldn’t have been late.”

Then he hip-checks Tony on the way into the HQ.   

It’s a pretty nice start to the day, really.

 

* * *

 

“Aww, doughnuts!”  Clint bounces over to the boxes spread on the table, grabbing up the last chocolate-covered cake before settling into his seat smugly with a cup of coffee.  Tony clutches his own cream puff to his chest, glaring as if someone were going to try to take it.  (They weren’t.)

“Can we focus?” Hill asks, voice tired.  Steve can see she has dark circles under her eyes, and pours a second cup of coffee to bring to her on his way to the conference table, before sitting down two seats away, on the other side of Tony.  “Thank you, Steve.  Briefing packets - take one, pass them around,” she instructs, clapping the six-inch stack on the table with a loud enough noise to get everyone’s attention.  Tony takes the first one and shoves the stack to his right, in front of Steve, then reaches into the pastries and puts a jelly doughnut in front of her.

She looks at him suspiciously.  “Why do you know my favorite kind of doughnut?”

Tony smiles guilelessly, and kisses her cheek.  She wrinkles her nose and scrubs at it like a kid with their grandma, and Steve grins at them.  

“Stop that,” she mutters, glaring at both of them indiscriminately.  "You're not cute."

The packets circle around to Natasha, Wanda, Vision, Clint, and finally Sam, on Maria’s other side.  “Where were you two, anyway?” Clint asks around a mouthful of cake-pastry, flipping back the front sheet.  “You basically just disappeared, for, like, a week.”

“Bringing Bucky home,” Steve says, at the same moment Tony blurts, “Having sex.”

There’s an awkward pause.  

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose, and tries not to throw up.

“Not with Barnes,” Tony clarifies, “With each other."  

Which is when Steve, involuntarily, coughs.

There’s another, even longer pause.  

And then Clint snickers.  “Aww, couldn’t decide?” he asks Steve, and Steve feels himself turn red.  

“There were extenuating circumstances,” he mutters.  

Sam smiles, slow and even, at him.  “Well, congratulations,” he says.  “Sounds like you had an exciting week.  I know this is a big deal for you two.”

“In Steve’s case, a couple of big deals,” Wanda adds, dryly.  

“Hey!” Tony objects, although, judging by his voice, he’s not actually that upset.

“...Possibly one bigger than the other.” 

_“Hey?!”_

Clint squints at them, moderately appalled.  “Wait, was that - did Wanda just make a penis joke?”

“I am pretty sure Wanda just made a penis joke,” Sam agrees, smile widening.  

Wanda takes a noisy slurp of her tea in wordless response.

"What about it, Steve?  Any comment?"  Clint slurps his own coffee, smirking.  

Steve grumbles, settling deeper into his chair, feeling more beat-up by this conversation than he had in any five back-alleys in Brooklyn, put together. “...I’m not saying which is which.”

“Do you have to?” Clint asks, waggling his eyebrows.  “I mean:  Barnes -” He holds his hand out flat, a couple inches above his head. “- Tony.”  He holds the hand at mid-chest-height.

 _“HEY!”_ Tony yelps, indignant, and throws a quarter of a doughnut at Clint.  “You - !”

Steve takes a deep breath and smiles, slowly, then lets it keep growing until it spreads all over his face.

“Oh, that is just _creepy,”_ Sam observes, looking ill.

“Please let this conversation be over soon,” Hill prays, rubbing her left hand over her face and looking unnervingly like Fury.

“Actually, Tony’s is bigger,” Natasha says matter-of-factly, stirring sugar into her coffee.

Tony looks at her in horror.  “I don’t want to know how you know that.”

 _“I_ kind of do,” Sam says, equally horrified and fascinated.

“Pepper and I are very good friends,” Natasha reminds them, taking a sip of her now-sweetened beverage, then makes a face.  “Plus, Steve basically just told us.”  She indicates his smug expression with her cup.

“I had a very good long weekend,” Steve says in a censorious tone, but it doesn’t matter because his face is bright red and everybody can see it.  “And now my time off is over, and we can all get back to work?”

“Oh, no.  No.  Definitely not,” Sam says, “We’re going to keep mocking you about this for about -"  He wobbles his hand, palm down and fingers spread, then snaps and points at Steve. "- oh, the next six years or so.”

Natasha reaches over and pats his hand comfortingly.  “Think of it as a group bonding exercise.”

Vision sighs, apparently bored.

They do, eventually, get back to the briefing packet, though.  It's an important one, outlining their plans for the next month - Maria has basically laid out an all-hands-on-deck offensive, and they all have important parts to play - and everyone is drawn into the discussion deeply enough that they forget to keep teasing Steve and Tony for the rest of the meeting.

 

* * *

 

Later, when everyone is standing up and refilling their coffee cups, meandering around and talking about the Hill Offensive (Steve's name for it), he spots Tony getting ready to slip out and sets down his briefing packet, turning away from Natasha with a quick, “Excuse me.”  

He calls across the room, “Before you go, Tony, stay there just a minute - I have something for you.”

(Someone - probably Clint - snickers, "I just  _bet_ you do," but Steve ignores them.)

Two minutes later, he’s back with two large boxes, each about two feet by three feet in profile, and one foot deep.  “Think they’ll be okay in the back seat?” he asks from behind them.

“What are those?” Wanda asks, looking at the boxes as if they were snakes that would bite her.  

“The _paintings!”_  Tony sounds delighted.  “You remembered!  Yeah, the back seat should be fine - we’ll have to get your bike out, by the way."  His voice takes on the distinct note of exasperation he saves just for Steve.  "I’ll need you to do that, since you literally _lifted the entire bike_ to get it in there.”  

Steve squints at him.  “You know I’ve been lifting bikes _literally_ since the 1940’s, right?”

Tony makes an affectionate, disgusted noise.

“What paintings?” Sam asks, and then there’s nothing for it but to pop the lid of the nearest container and pull out the first one that came to hand - in this case, the last of the series, the one with the turkey.  

Tony starts laughing.

 _“Hey,”_ Steve says, irritated.

Natasha snorts, loudly, from over by the coffee machine.  “Steve,” she says, in the voice she uses for calling him out when he’s being ridiculous.

 _“Steve,”_ adds Wanda, in a voice like she’s going to cry.

Sam, though, doesn’t say anything.  He just smiles steadily, the same appreciative, clever, easy look that had first captured Steve’s attention in DC, the one that made Sam stand out when Steve had been meeting two or three runners every day for _months._

Steve waits a minute, then slides the painting back down into the case and seals it up.  He turns towards the exit -

\- and runs straight into Vision, who is hovering, silently, four inches off the floor, staring at the cases which hold the thirteen paintings.  Startled, Vision meets his eyes, then, with a nod, sinks directly through the floor, looking troubled.

“Huh,” Steve says, looking at the completely solid floor.  

“Want a hand out to the car?” Sam asks, and Steve breaks himself out of his trance to shake his head.

“No, it’s okay.  I’ve got it,” he says, then picks up the cases, one in each arm like particularly stiff toddlers, and follows Tony out to the car.  

As they leave, he sees Wanda slip out the back of the kitchen, towards the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone! Just a couple notes:  
> 1) Thank you to everybody who has responded to this! I love talking about these woobies and this universe's setup, so if you want to witter with me, I will cheerfully do just that! 
> 
> 2) AO3 wants to tell me that "fisting" isn't a real word. _I do not believe you, AO3!_ And frankly, you of all websites should know better.
> 
> 3) I don't have a beta for this series; my process is, write it in a google doc, copy into AO3's editor, and read over it until I'm reasonably sure I don't have any typos. So if there *are* typos, it just means I managed to miss them and you should totally point them out. (Also, I'm still hunting for a beta for this... *perks suggestively*)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There have been a few requests for a listing of all the Animal Avengers Steve painted up; those, along with the dynamics of the characters from my draft notes [can be found here](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/65607733). Separately from the paintings, Steve was also sketching Maria Hill as a skink in some comics, which he was persuaded to post pseudonymously as an exercise in keeping a cover. These are the _Marisa Knoll: Skink-ret Agent_ comics, which I probably find far more amusing than anybody else does. Here's the line from chapter 5 of Neither Independent Nor Serious:
> 
> _Later, the comic will have evolved into a wildly popular adventure story involving Agent Marisa Knoll, Nikolai the Angry Tortoise, and Phineas the Mild-Mannered Mongoose, facing off against various forces such as - just an example, here - Lonnie, who wants to wield his brother’s magic sword, and is furiously envious that he can’t. (Because he doesn’t have arms - Lonnie’s a snake.) (He’s adopted.)_
> 
> (yes, I'm hilarious)
> 
> I also wanted to note that I pretty much adopted whole-cloth the headcanon from [Peaceable Skills](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6809167), which is an absolutely AMAZING fic that I heartily recommend that you read if you haven't already. (Or re-read. It's great!) Soft Baby-holding Bucky Barnes is my favorite, honestly!
> 
> FIC!

 

What happens next is a push:  another solid month of hitting HYDRA hard, all the Avengers focusing in, some of the intel that Bucky had supplied already coming into play.  

They’re all hustling hard.  Steve barely even sees Natasha, which he tries not to find it ominous.  Unfortunately, he also doesn’t see Tony much, either:  hunkered down in the Tower, Tony’s working on tech upgrades for the team, legal protection for Bucky, and data analysis for Hill, in addition to the work he does for his company.

Steve, tentatively, suggests over the phone that Tony spend as much time as possible with Pepper that month, and Tony doesn’t even put up a token protest, much to Steve’s relief.  Tony and Pepper are a great couple, and he’s glad Tony isn’t neglecting her just because life is busy.  The one time Steve does manage to stop by New York City, three weeks in and one more to go, the two are out on a high-profile date to one of the fanciest restaurants in town.  

Steve just smiles, and pays a visit to Bucky, instead.

 

* * *

 

“How are things?” Steve asks, leaning his shield against the now-somewhat-full bookcase and heading towards the wicker chair.  

Bucky hops up and claims the chair before Steve can get there, smirking at him and knocking a pillow to the floor with an insouciant raise of his eyebrows.  (There are _lots_ of pillows, now, and Steve makes a mental note of yet another thing to thank Tony for.)

Steve pretends to grumble, and settles in cobbler-style on the cushion, looking happily at a Bucky who seems much more well-rested.  “Going well?”

Bucky shrugs.  “I’ve been working,” he says, voice a little rough with disuse, but still the same resonant tenor that Steve’s been missing since 1945.  

“On what?” Steve asks eagerly, and Bucky’s eyes dart to the side - no, to the side- _table,_ the one by the bed, new since last week but also _Toy Story_ themed, holding a stack of notepads and thick hardcovers.  The tablet Steve had seen last time is resting on top of the stack.

“Few things,” Bucky shrugs.  “Some info, like you asked me about last time…”  He nods towards Steve in a way that means _do you remember?,_ and Steve realizes that this is more of the HYDRA info that he’d been passing on to Hill.  “Stark gave me an email I could send it to.”

“Tony?  He did?”  Steve is surprised, and it takes him a second to realize why:  he’d been pretty sure that Tony and Bucky didn’t like each other, and it’s a shock to hear that they’ve been interacting productively.  And the way Bucky had said his name:   _Stark,_ not _Tony,_ but it’s _Stark_ the way it was once _Carter,_ or the way it was _Phillips._  

Not a friend, but someone he respects.  

Something excited and hopeful takes flight in Steve’s stomach, and he smiles up at Bucky encouragingly.

“He comes by sometimes,” is all Bucky says about Tony, though.  “Last time he brought his girl; she’s pretty neat.”  He looks down, remembering, then looks up at Steve with a wry smile.  “Got the impression her coming by was all _her_ idea.”  

“Probably,” Steve agrees, smiling fondly.  He can see Bucky thinking about what to say next, not in the way where he’s at a loss for words, but in a way where he wants to make a joke and isn’t sure it’s an okay joke to make.  “Just say it,” he advises with a groan of resignation.

Bucky shrugs, looking out the window and then back at him again.  “Was just gonna say - you seem like a pretty shitty Omega, all things considered.”

Steve snorts.  At the same time, though, he wonders, _What on Earth did Pepper say to him?_  

Back before he and Tony got together, Pepper had told him that she was prepared to share Tony with an Omega, and that she was willing for Steve to take that role.  Now, he wonders if that’s part of why she was so annoyed last month… if Pepper was prepared to an Omega, because there are certain ways Omegas are _expected to act._

Steve does not particularly act in those ways.  

He’s pretty much never going to flatter anyone, for starters.  

“Yeah, that’s how Pepper’s thinking of it, too,” he says now, a little cautiously.  “I think Tony and I are using a slightly different model.”  Honestly, Tony was never looking for an Omega.

“Yeah?”  Bucky rocks the chair once, back and forth.

“Yeah,” Steve confirms.  “It’s...”  His hand clenches in his lap, and he looks down, watching it squeeze against itself.  “We’ve always… cared… about each other.”   _Harsh words on the helicarrier._  “Well, almost always.  Except for the first three days or so, anyway.  We got off on the wrong foot.”  

“Yeah, there's a surprise.”  Bucky tilts his head to the side, a silent invitation to keep talking.

Steve shrugs, feeling like the ungainly teenager they both (mostly) remembered.  “And I mean, _I_ knew…. Uh…”

Eyebrows up.  

Steve coughs.  “I knew I, uh, found him attractive,” he says, watching Bucky’s face carefully.  

“‘Cause he was an Alpha?” Bucky asks, and it throws Steve for a loop.  It’s pretty much the last thing that he’d been expecting Bucky to think; not only does Steve not care what dynamic Tony is, he’s not sure why Bucky thinks he _would_.

“No?”  Steve stares, confused.  “When have I ever been especially attracted to Alphas?”

Bucky shrugs.  “I knew you were hoping _I’d_ be one,” he points out.  “Before.”

Steve blinks, letting his head rear back a bit so that it hits the bed.  “I was hoping you would be one because we all thought I’d be an Omega,” Steve says, “And that was a - a _socially accepted_ way for us to be together.”

Bucky rocks the chair, not looking convinced.  

“I was hoping you’d be an Alpha because I thought that was the only way I could keep you, Buck.  It wasn’t because I particularly liked Alphas.”

Bucky looks back at him evenly.  “But you _do,_ right?” he insists.  “Because I remember you during the war, and when Dernier had that early heat, you looked like you’d rather march another fifteen miles into Poland than deal with it.”

Steve remembers the incident - if anything, _too_ vividly.  “That’s because we _already were_ fifteen miles behind German lines, Bucky.  It was, uh…  It was pretty bad timing - and anyway, I think Jacques had a sweetheart back in France who’d been helping him out with his heats, and I thought he might not like, you know…”

He lapses into silence, and Bucky doesn’t leap to fill it, both men remembering one hell of a difficult mission:  too much mud, too much smoke, and down two men because Steve and Jim Morita (the only other Alpha  in the Howling Commandos) had had to switch out taking care of Jacques while the other one covered for them.  Steve was a hell of an effective fighter in hand-to-hand, but he and Jim were just about even in shooting accuracy, and Jim knew more than Steve about the explosives Jacques Dernier usually managed.  So Jim set up the explosives while Steve and Jacques took cover, then Steve went in and took the base while Jim took care of Jacques.  Then Steve came back, and Jim patched up the rest of the troop, and then _Jim_ came back while Steve memorized all the intel they could find in the enemy base.  

Then Steve _and_ Jim slept, and Bucky’d been deputized to watch Jacques, because Bucky’d been the only Beta on the team who could put out pheromones…  And the whole time, Jim and Steve both had been having physiological whiplash, because the pheromones associated with Rut were pretty much the opposite of the ones associated with Fight...

God, it was _awful._

“Were you even still smelly at that point?” Steve asks now, feeling guilty about it.  “I remember thinking, _Oh, Bucky’s a smelly Beta, he can pitch in,_ but I was remembering how things were at home.”

“Nah,” Bucky says, looking off out of the window - Steve can see it in his peripheral vision, because he’s _also_ looking out the window.  

God forbid they have any eye contact during this mess.

“Jacques was okay with it, though,” Bucky continues.  “I think he knew I was eventually gonna switch the whole way down; he said something like that, anyway…”  He shrugs.  “Didn’t make much sense at the time, of course.  Now, though…”  He breathes, a little bit of a sigh behind it.  “Going to war…” he says evenly, “...it was actually pretty good for me.   _That_ way, at least.”  A small smile flicks across his mouth as he says, “I wasn’t like you, Stevie; I actually kinda _liked_ obeying orders.”

“Hey!”  Steve glares, mock-offended.  “I obeyed orders.”

That gets him full-on eye-contact, all right, in a disbelieving scoff for the ages.

“...when they weren’t _stupid_ orders, anyway,” Steve mutters, and Bucky’s eyes crinkle at the corners with his first real laugh of the evening.

 

* * *

 

“So what else have you been up to?” Steve asks, grabbing another pillow and rearranging it behind his back.

Bucky ducks his head, uncharacteristically avoiding the question, and Steve is instantly intrigued.  

“Come on, what?” he asks, smiling teasingly.

Bucky mutters something indistinguishable.

“What was that?”  Steve’s using his _Captain Asshole_ voice, the one where he pretends to be some kind of a moral authority to convince people to do what he says…  the one he only uses around people who know it’s a facade.

Bucky, apparently, can spot the world of trouble he’s heading for if he keeps dodging, because he grumbles, “Translations,” at an audible level.

Steve frowns, confused.

“Online,” Bucky explains, pointing at his bedside table.  Steve investigates, finding that the hardcovers on it are all reference books.  

Bucky shrugs.  “I haven’t picked up as many projects since you brought me in,” he murmurs, “but then, I don’t need to earn very much, either, these days.”

Steve blinks at him, smiling slowly.  “That’s great, Bucky,” he says, hopelessly happy.  “I had no idea - how’d you come up with that?”

Bucky shrugs again, uncomfortable with the praise.  “It’s mostly technical works,” he mutters, scratching absently at the back of his neck with his flesh hand, in a gesture Steve remembered from before the war - hell, before _high school._

“Still!”  Steve knows he’s beaming, he’s just so _proud_ of everything Bucky’s doing, _has been_ doing, making a good life for himself.  Yeah, it sucks that he has to do it in the tower - that the world outside isn’t safe enough for him - but they’ll get through it, make it work.  

 

* * *

 

An hour later, they’ve talked through Steve’s rough plans to make the modern world safe for (and, alright, _from)_ Bucky; they’ve joked about all the movies they’ve missed, made plans to watch a few of them together.  Steve even told Bucky about his work on the _Marisa Knoll_ comic, which Bucky laughs himself sick about.  Then he pulls up the comic on his tablet, and laughs himself sick again.

They’re both sitting on the floor by this point; it was frustrating to the point of impracticality to constantly turn the tablet to show Steve what Bucky’d been looking at, so Bucky had picked himself up and sat on the ground next to Steve, their legs propped in parallel next to each other.  So Bucky feels it when Steve’s phone starts vibrating.

“Answer it,” he rolls his eyes, tapping the screen to advance to the next comic.  They take longer to load than to read; Steve wonders if it’s the WiFi, because certainly the internet here is usually very fast…

“I thought you were back in New York tonight,” Tony starts.

“I am,” Steve says, relaxing against the bed at the sound of Tony’s voice.  Beside him, Bucky snorts, then reads the action-page of Marisa pulling a gun from her skink-vest and shooting at Lonnie the Snake and the Peregrine while retreating down a corridor.  He taps to load the next comic, and Steve pulls up the camera on the phone to take a selfie with him.  “I was going to stop in, but TMZ said you were busy.”

There’s a beat of silence (Bucky rolls his eyes), and Steve gestures with the phone to get eye contact before he hits the camera button.

Tony admits, “That’s fair.  Don’t stay away from the Tower, though; you still have a room here.”

“Good to know,” Steve says, amused, and sends the selfie.

There’s a pause while Tony opens it.

“Oh, ha, ha,” he grouses.  

“I know you’re busy tonight,” Steve says wistfully, “But do you want to have breakfast together tomorrow?  I’m not due back Upstate until tomorrow night.”

“Then I’ll be greedy,” Tony answers, voice warm under his customary brashness.  “Breakfast _and_ lunch.  Come on up arounnnnnnd… eight?  Can you do eight?”

“I can do eight,” Steve agrees, smiling like a dope into the phone.  

“Just kiss already!” Bucky says loudly from _right next to him,_ and Tony cackles into his ear.

 _“Bucky!”_ Steve closes his eyes in mortification.

“He’s two hundred yards that way, go get him!” Bucky shouts, pointing up, which isn’t accurate because they’re actually on one of the higher levels of the building, so it’s really only a hundred and fifty yards.  

“Have I mentioned I like your boyfriend?” Tony asks, voice warm and intimate even over the phone.  “He has good ideas.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Steve grumbles, because he _isn’t,_ Bucky has made that _very clear._

“Say that next weekend,” Tony tells him breezily.  “Gotta go, Pepper’s almost done in the shower.”

“See you tomorrow morning,” Steve says, smiling softly, pleased.  “Tony?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you,” Steve says, and he can just picture Tony’s face:  soft, and warm, but flummoxed by the open expression of emotion.

Touched.

Embarrassed.

It’s all right there in his voice when he says, “...love you too, Steve.”

 

* * *

 

Steve hangs up the phone and leans his head back against the bed, closing his eyes and basking for a moment; Bucky gives him space by getting up and heading to the small attached bathroom.

The sound of a flush and water running in the sink herald his return.  “All good?” he asks roughly, hovering in the doorway.

Steve opens his eyes, smiles happily at him.  “Yeah, Buck,” he says.  “I’m really good, actually.”

Bucky nods, small, pleased smiling flickering over the corners of his mouth.  Steve knits his eyebrows and stretches his arms over his head, bending back a little over the bed.  “What’s next weekend, anyway?” he asks, knowing that Bucky’s own version of the serum would have allowed him to overhear.

Bucky gives him a look like he’s the greatest moron ever to set foot outside of Brooklyn, but that doesn’t exactly make things clearer.

“What?” Steve asks, straightening up and folding his arms over his head, putting pressure on the top of his skull for the stretch in his triceps.

Bucky snorts.

“You dumbass,” he says tiredly, rolling his eyes.  “That’s my next heat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much credit to magic_gps for beta assistance! Thank you, and any mistakes still remaining are mine!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Decided to add what was going to be an extremely short chapter 6 to this chapter instead, so... Huzzah! Longer chapter! *throws confetti* If you looked at this chapter in the first thirty minutes of it being posted, hit refresh.
> 
> ETA: It seems like most of the time when I go to post a chapter, I get distracted while doing it and forget to thank my beta? Which is pretty horrible, actually, so I'm going through and putting them in all the chapters that need them. Thank to magic_gps for beta work on this one!

Steve stares at Bucky.  “Fuck,” he says.  “Already?”

“Happens every month, Stevie.”  He smiles crookedly.  “Funny how it doesn’t seem so soon to me, huh?”

Steve bobs his head to the side in acknowledgement: yeah, the time probably passes faster if you’re not out hunting down HYDRA.  He looks to the side as Bucky settles back into the rocking chair.  “Do you, uh…  Do you have… plans?”  

Then he winces. _"Do you have plans?”  Smooth, Rogers!_   

Bucky just looks at him, then raises his eyebrows, amused.  Laughing at him, but - Steve thinks - in the same way he always laughed at him. Not in a _mean_ way.

Steve scratches the back of his neck.  “I just meant - how would you like to spend your heat?”  There, that was definitely better.

Bucky folds his arms over his chest.  “I’d _like -_ I’d _like it_ if suppressants worked on me,” he says bitterly.  “And while I’m wishin’… It’d be nice if Natalia joined me.”

Steve squirms; he’s still not sure what to make of that.

He can’t forget that Natasha lied to him, implying that her encounter with the Winter Soldier outside of Odessa had been her first.  And if that’s where it had ended - if she’d come clean once they realized it was Bucky, or even after SHIELD fell - that would have been the end of it. But she kept her silence until Bucky spilled the beans while out of his mind during a heat, and that was…  Steve doesn’t know _what_ to make of it.  

All he knows is that he’s feeling pretty betrayed.

And it’s not like Natasha has been willing to sit down and _talk_ about it with him, either.  She’s successfully avoided being alone with him ever since he found out, and he’s not sure if it’s because he knows the secret now, or if she’s feeling awkward because they’d been in a heat together - or even some unspecified _third_ reason that he’s not even aware of!  And finally, to top it all off, he’s still not even certain what the relationship between Bucky and Natasha _is_ \- or was:  Bucky seems to be pretty much  in love with her, but Natasha, as far as Steve can tell, hasn’t visited the Tower since they brought Bucky in a month ago…

Still.  

“Do you….  Do you want me to ask her?  If she’ll join you, I mean.”  It isn’t like Steve wouldn’t do harder things for Bucky.

Bucky looks at him sharply, then swallows, and looks out the dark window, past their reflections to the glitzy lights of Manhattan.  “...Nah,” he says, then shakes his head and repeats himself.  “No, she already made it pretty clear that that’s done.”

 _And that answers that,_ Steve thinks, watching Bucky’s jaw clench.  

_Poor guy._

“I’m sorry,” he says, hopeless to help with anything more.  

Bucky shakes his head.  “S’alright,” he mumbles.  “It’s her choice, anyway.”  He blinks rapidly, and doesn’t look back down at Steve.  

Steve sighs, and pats his foot - the nearest part of him he can reach.  Bucky laughs harshly and looks down pityingly at Steve, his expression saying, _Nice try._

“Thanks,” he says, voice bone dry.

Steve shrugs.  “I know something about rejection,” he says, and they both remember a host of Omegas back in Brooklyn who hadn’t given him thirty seconds before dismissing him.  

Not women, so much; they’d known not to even bother _trying_ with women.

Bucky thinks about it, and shrugs - and apology for forgetting, probably.  He coughs to clear his throat.  “So I guess it’s just you and me,” he offers.

Steve blinks up at him, simultaneously hopeful and alarmed.  “It doesn’t have to be!” he blurts.  “I mean - you have… options.”

“Yeah?”  Bucky raises his eyebrows in a look Steve’d seen a hundred times when Bucky was his sergeant.  “What are my options, then?”  Steve starts to answer, but Bucky cuts him off:  “And _don’t_ say toys.  I’ve done heats alone, and I’ve done one with you.  You’re better.”

“Are you sure?  Because it’s okay if you’d rather -”

 _“Steve.”_  Bucky’s eyes are wide.   _“Trust me._  I mean, I’ve done the side-by-side _comparison,_ here.  So until you’ve partnered _yourself_ in a heat, how’s about you shut up and trust my judgement?”

Steve realizes that the ache in his back is from how hard he’s pressing back into the bed.  “O-okay,” he stutters.  “Geeze, Bucky.”  

And then, thinking about it…  

“Wait, did you just tell me to go fuck myself?”

Bucky smirks.

Steve hits him with a pillow.

 

* * *

 

“Seriously, though,” he says when all the feathers have stopped flying - and trust Tony to get authentic goose-feather pillows when there are perfectly comfortable synthetic foams available.  “I am not the only option on the table, here.”

“Oh, okay,” Bucky says in a voice like he’s humoring Steve.  “Who else could it be, then?”

And Steve’s mind goes blank.

He’d been about to say, “One of the Avengers”, except…  He and Tony are the only Alpha Avengers, and Tony said last time that he wasn’t available.  The have a couple of smelly Betas on the team, but while smelly Betas are as good as Alphas in combat situations, in a heat, it’s just not the same - and he and Bucky both know it.

“Well…  I mean, I know it’s not ideal, but there _are_ professionals…”

Bucky doesn’t even take a second to be surprised, he just goes straight to laughing at him.  “Buddy,” he says, “I’m trying to imagine you hiring a hooker, here.  There’s a _mental image -”_

“Shut up -”  There are very few things Steve wouldn’t do for Bucky; hiring a prostitute, or even _several_ prostitutes, isn’t anywhere even close to that list.

“- I mean, can you wear the Captain America costume while you do it?”

_“- Shut uuup -”_

“- And make sure it’s the one with the tights,” Bucky adds.

Steve sighs, and makes a great show of his patience, thumping his head against the side of the bed he’s leaning on.  A feather drifts slowly out from his hair and down to the floor beside him.  

“Alright, alright.  Look, your heart was in the right place with it.  But I’m not - you know - I mean, my big thing is, I need it to be someone I can trust.”  Bucky’s looking pretty dubious, and Steve supposes he has a point.  Alpha prostitutes are rare, and tend to be “high-end”, so discretion is pretty much their highest priority, but…  

It wouldn’t be someone any of them know _well._

And that makes a difference.

Steve thinks for a minute, but there’s really only one Alpha - other than Tony - that he knows well enough, and trusts thoroughly enough, to pass the name on to Bucky.  

He sighs.  “There is one guy,” he says, trying not to look as reluctant as he is.  “I mean, not anybody _I_ would wanna have sex with, but I’d imagine it’s different in a heat, and, well…  I trust him.  Completely.  He’s like…  He reminds me a lot of Peggy.”  

Bucky looks surprised into at least entertaining the thought.  “Who?” he asks.

“His name is Nick Fury,” Steve says.  “He’s one of the guys who helped me bring down the Triskellion, and he’s the guy who coordinated the air-evac from Sokovia.”  

Bucky frowns lightly, mouthing the name, and then his head comes up as it apparently clicks.  “Wait…  Fury, _Nicholas J.?_  Director of SHIELD?   _That_ Nick Fury?”

Steve nods.

“Didn’t I _shoot_ him?”  Bucky pauses, thinking about it, then adds, _“Twice?!”_

“Blew his SUV up, then shot him three times through a wall, actually,” Steve admits.  He shrugs.  “But I’m sure that’s water under the bridge.”  He’s actually _completely_ sure about that, because this is too good an opportunity to miss, and Nick has always been a pragmatist.  He’ll want a favor for this, but he’ll do it, and he’ll be more careful with Bucky than anybody else Steve can think of.

It’s a weird sort of trust, but it’s a solid one.

Bucky nods, slowly.  “Steve?” he asks.

Steve folds his arms on top of his bent knees.  “Yeah, Bucky?”

 _“No,”_ Bucky says firmly, and Steve laughs, lowly, and rests his chin on his arms.

“Back to just us, then, huh?” he asks, smiling at Bucky.

Bucky smiles back, small and soft.  “Yeah,” he says fondly, then adds with a smirk, “Just like the good old days.”

Steve laughs again, only a little bit hysterically.

 _The good old days._ Yeah, just like that.

 

* * *

 

Steve falls asleep on Bucky’s floor, head propped on his bent knees as Bucky pages through _Marisa Knoll._ He wakes up at quarter 'til five - his normal waking time - with a crick in his neck, and tries to leave quietly so as not to wake Bucky.  He turns on his way out the door, though, and like Lot’s wife, the look back catches him:  Bucky’s eyes gleam at him in the murky half-light that comes in the city at night.  

“Go back to sleep,” Steve says quietly.  “I’m gonna head out for a run.”

Bucky shakes his head, and sits up.  “Come back?” he asks, sounding uncertain, and Steve, struck by the tone as much as anything, re-enters the room, settling into the creaky, but admittedly comfortable, rocker.

“What’s up?” he asks, voice near a whisper because that’s what you do when it’s night and folks are sleeping, even when you’re in Avengers Tower with the best soundproofing money can buy and the only other guy in the room is awake.

Bucky smiles, though, the subtle way he usually does now:  a tiny flicker at the corner of his mouth, a softening at the edges of the eyes.  Suddenly, Steve remembers half a dozen other nights, just like this:  one sitting up, whispering to the other in the darkness.

It’s an old thing, that memory, and like most antiques, it’s more precious, but more fragile, for its age.

“I just…”  Bucky looks up at the ceiling, almost as if praying, although he’d never been religious before, and Steve really doubts he is now.  He shakes his head.  “Is it… okay?  You bein’ there for my heats, I mean.  Are _you_ alright with that?”

Steve reaches out, instinctively, to grasp Bucky’s shoulder, but Bucky pulls away, blinking at him in the dimness.  Awkwardly, Steve pulls his hand back, tucking it across his stomach and shifting in the rocker.  “Yeah, Bucky.  Yeah, of course.  Anytime you need me, pal.”  It’s a little chilly in Bucky’s room; Steve’s shivering, just a bit.  “Always.  To the end of the line.”

Bucky flicker-smiles, tilting his head hopefully.  “Not the end of the line, yet?” he asks, voice losing some of its roughness.

Steve shakes his head, and his own voice is pretty gravelly.  “Not even close.”

 

* * *

 

Steve wears his favorite comfy jeans and blue henley to breakfast that morning, brushing absently at his hair, which is getting long.  He shows up with coffee - because it can’t hurt - and flowers:  bright orange day-lilies, orchids so deep a red they’re almost purple, and little periwinkle sweet peas, all interspersed with baby’s breath.  

When Jarvis lets him into the penthouse, Pepper is still there, dressed in a sharp green suit and feisty aquamarine heels.  She’s fixing herself a cup of what looks like more coffee, and when Steve enters, she looks up, freezes briefly, and then smiles broadly.  “Steve!  Good morning,” she calls, sipping her drink and - she doesn’t _back away,_ exactly, but somehow she’s suddenly nowhere near either the counter or the door.  

“Pepper,” Steve greets, then gives her his own broad smile.  “You don’t have a vase, do you?”  He gestures with the flowers.

“I’m sure there’s one in here somewhere,” she says, and moves back towards the counter to start flipping through the cupboards.  

She doesn’t seem to know where anything is, and Steve suspects that there isn’t a lot of cooking done in this kitchen.

“Shouldn’t you wait until Tony comes down, though?” she asks, locating a tall blue vase in the top cabinet on the right.  The color, Steve notes, coordinates both with the flowers, and with her outfit.

Of course it does.

“Nope,” he says, and comes up beside her.  “They’re for you.”  

He holds them out between them so that she can’t avoid taking them without being rude.

Pepper has a lot of qualifications for her current role - Tony chose well when he made her CEO - including her business degree from a top-tier program, her passion for the company and for what they’re doing, her adherence to the No Weapons ideology that Tony had pioneered when he came back from Afghanistan…  But her biggest qualification is her face, Steve has always thought.  

She has a poker face that won’t quit.  He doesn’t know where she first developed it - although he suspects that some of it has to do with childhood bullying, because she has a distinctive appearance and children are terribly cruel sometimes - but he knows that face was honed while watching Tony Stark make Terrible Life Decisions, and now she wields it in the boardroom to frankly _terrifying_ effect.  

So Steve can’t see her reaction to the flowers; it could be any number of things, really.  But the fact that she feels the need to use the poker-face at all right now…  well, that carries its own sort of message.

“Thank you,” she says, and gives them an inquisitive sniff.  “Oh, goodness!  Well, they’re lovely!  And such a heavenly scent.”  She smiles graciously at him.

“I was a little worried about that,” Steve admits.  “It’s a pretty strong one.  I’m glad you like it.”  He smiles back, tentatively.

Pepper looks down at the sink, then, movements firm, pulls the band off the flowers and starts trimming the stems for the vase.  “I like the colors,” she says, and he _still_ can’t read her face, but her voice is different now.  Softer, in a way.

Steve shrugs.  “They seemed like Pepper colors.”  He puts the carafe of coffee on the counter, then leans his back against the granite top and searches for words.  “I know this - Tony and me, I mean - I know it’s not easy for you,” he says, giving her space by staying on his side of the sink, and by not making eye contact.  By not trying to read her, so she can have a moment to relax her guard.  “You said you’d been willing to, uh… to share… Tony… for a while.  But I know there’s a difference between what you expected, and what you got - I mean, there always was going to be, but…”  He shrugs.  “It’s probably been hard,” he finishes, “So thank you.  That’s what they’re for:  They’re a thank you.”

Pepper slides the last daylily into place.  “And a ‘keep up the good work’?” she asks, voice merely curious.

Steve snorts.  “Well, a little bit.  Kinda, yeah,” he admits, smiling over at her.  

She runs her hand along the edge of the elegant sky-blue vase, then pushes away from the counter, and, crossing the three feet between them, gives Steve a hug.  Surprised, he hugs her back; her arms are warm and very strong, and they feel a lot like family wrapped around him.  

“You probably know this,” Steve murmurs into her ear - not very far down at all, she’s almost the same height he is.  “But just in case:  Tony loves you very, very much.  I don’t know where he’d be without you.”

“Well, you’re not wrong,” Pepper sighs, and steps back.  She smiles politely at Steve before picking up the flowers, but he’s not quite sure what it means.  

He gets the door for her, though; it’s good manners, and anyway, between the flowers and her travel-mug, she has her hands full.

With Pepper gone, the kitchen is oddly empty.  He hears a rustling coming from the bedroom - and a faintly muttered profanity, right before FRIDAY informs him that Mr. Stark would like him to know he’s running late - so he starts a saucepan of water boiling for eggs, moves the butter to the table to give it time to warm, and pours a cup of coffee to take upstairs.

He doesn’t knock, instead lounging in the doorway to watch Tony scrambling into clothes.  “Relax,” he says, and Tony startles and falls over.

Steve thinks about giving him a hand up, but - nah.  “If you manage walking in a straight line without tripping over your own feet, you can have this mug of coffee,” he says, waving it so the smell wafts through the room.

“You’re terrible,” Tony moans, “I hate you.  Coffee?”  He stumbles towards Steve, almost falling into his arms.

Steve gives him the mug and a “good morning” kiss at the same time.

“Mmmm,” Tony says, melting, happy smile spreading across his face. _“Coffee.”_

Steve laughs out loud.  “I’ll be downstairs making breakfast; come join me when you’re ready.”  He turns before meandering back towards the kitchen.  

Tony smacks his ass on the way out.

 

* * *

 

Breakfast is poached eggs on toast, with avocado and sriracha - a combination that leaves Tony incredulous, but really, Steve needs all the calories he can get, and avocado happens to go _fantastically_ with eggs.

“But why the sriracha?” Tony wonders.

“Because you didn’t have hot sauce, now eat your damned breakfast.”

Tony eats.

“Okay,” he admits, “That’s actually pretty good - stop that, I can hear you being smug from over here.”

“I take it you don’t cook much?” Steve asks.

Tony makes a face.  “I make smoothies?”

Steve has made his own smoothies, including plenty of his own mistakes.  Peanut butter and apple had sounded like a great idea in his head - not so much in reality.  “I say that counts,” he decides.  

Tony makes victory arms.

 

* * *

 

“Why are there a bunch of dead plants in my trash can?” Tony asks, pausing with the lid of the trashcan raised by a foot-pedal, because apparently normal trashcan lids aren’t swanky enough.

“Stems,” Steve corrects, “from the flowers I brought Pepper.”  He finishes wiping out the sink, then stops next to Tony to drop the paper towel in the trash.

He sneaks a kiss onto Tony’s neck, too.   Well, he was in the area.

Tony’s looking at him like he comes from another planet, not nearly as interested in the neck-kissing as Steve was hoping he would be.  “You brought Pepper flowers?” he repeats.

Steve stops and pays attention, because he’s not sure what that tone in Tony’s voice is, but it’s not really a happy one.  Cautiously, he explains his reasoning, keeping his hands to himself while he watches Tony react.

Maybe it’d been a mistake?

When he’s done, though, Tony doesn’t look upset.  Instead, his mouth twitches, like he wants to smile, but isn’t sure he’s allowed.  It’s an expression Steve loves and hates at the same time:  loves, because Tony only uses it when he’s feeling something powerful; and hates, because someone, somewhere, told him not to do that.

And Steve’s pretty sure he knows who that was.  

_God damn it._

Tony cuts his eyes away and steps back, allowing the lid of the trash can to ease down with a hiss (because _of course_ Tony has a trash can with hydraulic shock absorbers on the lid).  When he speaks, it isn’t anything about the flowers, or Pepper, and Steve thinks that means Tony’s probably happy about the whole thing.

“So,” Tony says, playing with the two buttons at the collar of Steve’s shirt, “I have the designs for the new StarkPhone to look over before the SI planning meeting this afternoon, but you have to leave by 1:30, so that shouldn’t be a problem.  And I believe we’re going to lunch - by the way, does the cafe on level five sound good to you?”

It does.  Steve actually really likes their sandwiches, and they’re generous with the chips.  

“Great - got a surprise for you at lunch, by the way, don’t let me forget.  So what do you plan to do with the extra…”  Tony looks at his watch.  “...three hours of time we have to spend between now and lunch?”  He meets Steve’s gaze with a slight leer.

Steve brushes his hair back out of his eyes.  “Well, I’m sure we’ll think of something,” he says nonchalantly.  “Do you play parcheesi?”  

Tony looks disappointed for all of a second before Steve picks him up and tosses him over his shoulder.  

_“Damn it, Rogers!”_

 

* * *

 

 

Steve is lying on his back, listening to the faint sounds of the city that filter up from hundreds of feet below the windows of Tony’s penthouse.  He’s on the left side of the bed again, which is apparently going to be their routine, and Tony is lying on his stomach, blissed-out and poking at a StarkPad.

Steve has had a great morning - a _great_ morning - and Tony using his brain is always amazing, and, basically, what it comes down to is, Steve could probably go again.  

 _Tony probably couldn’t, though,_ he thinks guiltily.   _The serum.  And age.  So maybe I won’t mention it…_

“Okay, I know this is ridiculous - and feel free to laugh at me, really - but you are _unbearably_ hot,” Tony says, “So of course I’m _looking -_ I mean, who wouldn’t be looking, am I right?  Anyone would, it’s natural.”  He tosses his tablet aside, pushing himself up on his arms.  When Steve turns his head to look at him, he is, astonishingly, blushing.  Steve raises his eyebrows a tetch at the sight.  

“So, anyway, I’m _looking,_ is what I’m saying, of course I am, and I can’t help but notice -”

Tony’s face is tentative as he reaches out a hand, but he grasps his target firmly.

“Uh.  Can I?” Tony asks, voice hopeful.

Steve is grinning.  He rolls over and presses his mouth to Tony’s - not nicely, but hard, biting a little at Tony’s mouth until he moans and melts underneath him.  This, Steve has noticed, is something that Tony likes:  he likes being overpowered; he likes being treated just a little bit shabbily; and he likes not making the decisions.

And it’s not exactly like Steve has a _problem_ with any of that...

He winds a hand into Tony’s hair, and uses it to grip tightly as he moves back onto his back and guides Tony down.

 

* * *

 

Apparently, one of the things Tony was doing while poking at his tablet was setting them up reservations at the cafe on five.  Steve hadn’t been aware that was possible - the cafe is a small one, very casual, and barely even has assigned tables, much less reservations - but apparently, if you’re Tony Stark, these things happen, because when they show up at the entrance, one of the aproned employees greets them and adds, “Your table is right over here in the corner.”

A corner table allows better sightlines and somewhat improved privacy, meaning they can actually have a conversation.

It turns out to be a good thing, because as soon as Steve walks in and looks around, he starts having trouble breathing.

 _“What,”_ he starts, then stops again as his throat closes up.  He doesn’t have asthma anymore, he reminds himself.  His airway isn’t _actually_ shrinking.

It doesn’t help.

Tony pulls on his arm, getting him to the corner table and boxing him in, muttering in a soothing voice about _don’t panic, it’s okay, no one’s looking._ “Tilt your head back and open your mouth,” he advises _sotto voce._  “It forces you to relax a little.”  So apparently he’s been reading up on this subject, some time in the last three weeks...

Steve obeys, counting his breaths slowly the way he learned to so long ago.  Little by little, the panic subsides, for the most part before it really gets going.  

He doesn’t know _what_ he would've done if he had wound up crying again.

Beside him, Tony orders two bottles of fancy sparkling water, some kind of salad-like appetizer, and two sandwiches.  The waiter asks if Captain Rogers would like his usual smoothie, as well, and Steve snaps out of it enough to notice that it’s Tommy, who used to be on the register.

“Hi, Tommy,” Steve says, voice rusty but serviceable.  “Yeah, that’d be great.”  

Tommy’s smile is blinding, and he practically skips away to the register, his waist-length braid bouncing behind him.  

“Okay,” Tony says, watching Tommy bop away.  “You remember I told you I had a surprise for you?”

“Yeah,” Steve says.  “I wasn’t expecting this, though.”  He waves a hand around the cafe, where, every five yards on the walls, one of his paintings hangs, bound in a beige-painted frame and covered with glass - probably safety-glass, if Steve knows Tony.  They stand out against the pistachio-colored walls of the cafe, almost impossible to miss.  Right now, Steve can see two different groups of people sitting at the tables, looking at the paintings and, apparently, discussing them.

He tries to remember when the last time a stranger saw his art was.  Even when he was taking classes, it was only the teacher and the other students…  

He catches his breathing start to speed up again and forces it to slow, turning his hands palm-up where they rest on his thighs, and tilting his head back.

“Doing well,” Tony says.  “I admit, I thought that it might be, you know, a _good_ surprise…”

Steve swallows, unable to speak for a moment.  

“I mean, panic was not exactly the response I was going for.  Gratitude, maybe.  Pride, definitely.  Blowjobs?”

“Did that already,” Steve manages, and Tony laughs, relieved.

 _“There_ you are.”  Tony takes a stack of napkins out of the holder at the end of the table and pushes them towards Steve.  “So what’s up?”

Steve blows his nose, then tucks the napkin towards the edge of the table discretely.  “I just…  I wasn’t expecting it,” he admits.  “I don’t think I’ve had my artwork published… ever.  It’s strange to have it on display for just…”  He gestures at the cafe again.   _“...everyone.”_

Tony’s frowning at him.  He hesitates, then blurts out, “Don’t you have a whole thing online?”

Steve blanches, eyes popping wide.  “Oh,” he says, “I, uh...  I hadn’t actually realized anybody was reading that?”  Not beyond his friends, anyway.  He feels his breathing start to pick up again.

Fortunately, Tommy chooses that moment to arrive with a mango-banana smoothie and some sort of tomato-cheese thing which Tony serves out onto plates without being asked.  Steve thinks that’s rather sweet of him, as he focuses on sucking down pureed mango and breathing.  

“Fuck,” Tony says, “you’re really upset.  Damnit!  I should probably have warned you - I suck at gifts,” he apologizes.  “I always go overboard or in the wrong direction or _something -”_

Steve moves his left hand from his thigh to Tony’s, and Tony stops talking, looking at him with wary, uncertain eyes.

“It’s a good gift,” Steve says.  “I just wasn’t ready for it.”

Tony smiles falteringly at him, looking remarkably like Bucky for a moment.  

“I like it a lot,” Steve says firmly, then adds, “Here, try some of this,” and holds out the smoothie.  He actually orders if for the potassium and vitamin A, but Tony will like the syrup-smooth texture.

Tony does, eyes wide, leaning awkwardly into Steve’s space to get his mouth around the straw.  “It’s good,” he says, surprised.

They get on with lunch, eating tomatoes and cheese and talking about motorcycles, including the new models coming out of Europe (more exciting to Tony than to Steve).  Across the cafe, Steve’s enhanced hearing can pick up a dark-haired man in a suit expounding to a handsome black man in an even sharper suit about the obvious surrealist influences in the possum picture.

 

* * *

 

“So what are you and Barnes doing about the heat?” Tony asks as Steve stands in his own room in the tower, packing belongings into a duffle bag.  Steve eyes him warily, but Tony’s body language is fairly loose, and his jaw, while hardly slack, isn’t tight the way it gets when they’re about to fight.

“Just what you’re thinking,” Steve says calmly.  “He’s asked me to be there; I said yes.”

“Of course you did.”  Impossible to tell if Tony’s speaking quickly because he’s sincere, or speaking quickly because he’s lying.  He’s been known to do both.

“Of course I did,” Steve agrees, zipping the bag closed.  “He’s my best friend.”  

Tony nods, slowly.  “And it’s not like anyone else could do it,” he says.

“Well, I offered to buy him a hooker, but -”  Steve shrugs.  “- for some reason, he turned me down.”

Tony laughs and flops onto Steve’s bed, bouncing like a little kid.  “You’re not asking me,” he observes.

“No,” Steve says, feeling his way through the conversation like it’s a dark room full of low furniture and thumb tacks.  “Pepper seemed pretty less than thrilled, last time.  Didn’t want to offend.”

Tony does the slow nod again.  “Thanks,” he says.  His voice is low, though, and his eyes are darting to the side the way they do in his lab a lot.  Steve worries, but there’s not much he can do.

“No problem.”  He leans in and drops a kiss on Tony’s mouth, then leans back and presses his lips together instead of biting them in a technique he’d actually learned on the USO tour, to avoid showing nerves.  

“I have to go,” he tells Tony, “and you have designs to look at before your meeting.  A phone, right?”  That gets him a third nod, this one less slow.  “And the Avengers have about five missions in a row for the Hill Offensive, starting tomorrow at noon.  But we both know I’m gonna be back in this tower the minute Bucky calls me, and Hill’s gonna know that as soon as I get to the HQ, too.  

"But after all of that, when it’s done - after the heat, I mean...  Can I stay with you?”

Tony looks shocked.  “Not with Barnes?”

“Sorta figure Bucky’ll want his space.”  He reaches out and runs his hand through Tony’s hair, pulling just a bit.  “And I sorta figure I’m gonna want you.”

“Good point.  Sure,” Tony says breathlessly.  “Stay with me.”  He swallows.  “Good plan.”

“I have a good one every now and then,” Steve points out.  “I think there was even a song about it.”

Tony smiles, as he’d intended, and reaches up and touches Steve’s wrist, lightly as a butterfly - or as an engineer used to working in miniature.  “You have to go,” he says, sounding so unhappy about it that Steve knows it’s a request to stay.

Not an option; the world moves on, and the Avengers have to stay ahead of it.  Steve swallows the lump in his throat and kisses Tony goodbye.  

He takes a deep breath.  “I love you, Tony.”

Tony’s head jerks up, and he stands quickly, plastering himself against Steve’s front as he presses hot kisses against Steve’s mouth.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky's next heat is next chapter. It's giving me *conniptions*, I'll have you know.
> 
> Poor little dorks.


	6. Chapter 6

Somehow, despite the plethora of opportunities for everything to go horribly wrong, Steve’s team manages to wrap up the last phase of the Hill Offensive before Bucky goes into heat; in fact, not only are they done on time, they’re even done  _ early.   _ They gather into a dirty, exhausted mess in the kitchen of the Upstate HQ for a debrief that none of them are really up to holding.  Steve looks around at the assembled Avengers, and promptly announces that they’ll be doing the debrief over email.  Just as he says it, Hill arrives bearing two delivery bags full of pizza, pasta, and cookies, accompanied by Cameron Klein and a diminutive beta whose name Steve never learned toting several two-liter bottles of soda and a couple of gallons of milk.  Dumping the delivery bags on the counter and allowing the Avengers to fall on them like the starving wolves they are, Cameron and mystery-beta practically race each other out the door.  

Hill looks around, one hand on her hip, the other casually propped against the counter in a move they’re all supposed to pretend isn’t holding her up.  

“Good job,” she says, making exhausted eye contact with each of them.  “It’s not done; there’s still mopping up to do, here and there.  There’s a team handling that, and we’ll coordinate with them.  

“But the bulk of HYDRA is gone.  There are no more heads - at most, there are forearms with aspirations.”  She pauses and thinks about that analogy, then apparently decides to brazen it out, because she moves on.  “There is nowhere left to hide.  There are few remaining double-agents; the politicians and businessmen who were bought have, largely, been ostracized.

“We’ve done damned good work this month.  Now eat, and rest; those of you with family, go see them.  Clint, spend time at the farm.  Sam, say hi to your mom for me, particularly if it gets me more of that pie.  And Steve… Say hi to Tony for me.”

“And Barnes,” Clint says, already biting into his pizza.

Wanda elbows him, but nobody contradicts.  

 

* * *

 

Steve drives his bike down to the city, then parks it under the Tower and walks right back out again.  He stops at a local coffee shop, picking up expensive, hand-roasted beans for Tony, and then the florist, where he buys an arrangement of red roses and orange-gold tulips:  Iron Man colors.

Tony will get it.  

He hesitates, picking out the blooms.  He’s sure - he’s  _ pretty  _ sure - that this is the right move.  Tony has shown certain preferences in how he likes to be treated, and it’s not hard to put them together into a pattern.

It makes Steve’s chest hurt, honestly, because they’re clearly preferences formed when Tony was very  _ young.   _ He  aches, high and tight, for an almost baby version of Tony, brave enough to turn away from everything he’d ever known, brave enough to face down dozens, maybe hundreds of people, all of whom would have thought they knew best for him, all of whom would have been  _ wrong.   _ For a lost young man who would have had almost nothing in the way of support - Rhodey, and  _ maybe  _ Pepper, by the end of it - and who can’t have been happy, but who forged ahead  _ anyway  _ because he was trying to be the best man he could, only to get saddled with something he can’t have seen coming, and apparently didn’t want…

He shakes it off.  “Hey, do you sell vases?  What do you have that’s asymmetrical?”  

He sets the flowers up to be delivered two days from now in a new-age-y sort of pitcher made of arc-reactor-blue china.  If the calculations are correct - and, since the calculations include FRIDAY’s extrapolations based on her monitoring of Bucky’s behavior and vitals over the last month, they  _ will  _ be correct - the flowers should be delivered in the middle of Bucky’s heat.  

He almost makes it out the door before he turns back again.  “No, you know what?  Give me one of those, too,” he says, pointing to a cheerful display of gerbera daisies in yellow and chrysanthemums in pink.  “Put it in one of those oversized mugs with the smiley-face on 'em."  

“We’ll have to cut them fairly short, or it’ll over-balance,” the Beta at the counter says doubtfully.  

“That’s fine,” Steve tells him.  “It’s gonna wind up on a shelf, anyway.”  

He arranges to come pick it up later, then heads to the chocolate shop.  

Might as well do the thing properly.

 

* * *

 

He finds Tony in the workshop of the penthouse, and cringes before pushing open the door.  Really, though, he’s just dropping off the bag of coffee; surely, they can go fifteen minutes in the workshop without getting into a fight.  

Tony looks up when Steve enters, and the surprised, delighted look on his face is everything Steve was hoping for.  “For me?” he asks when Steve hands over the coffee beans.

Steve shrugs.  “I thought you might like them.”

“Me?  Drink coffee?  Pssht.”  Tony frowns, turning the bag over and over in his hands.  He has a smear of black grease along one cheek, as well as dark hand-prints smeared down the fronts of both thighs and - Steve cranes his neck curiously - yep, one perfectly clear, oily-black outline of a hand on his left buttock.  His hair looks especially soft and fluffy, and Steve guesses that Tony has been in the shop all day, that he knew he  _ would  _ be when he woke up this morning, and so didn’t bother with product after his shower.

He looks very touchable, like a baby goose or a kitten.  Steve is  _ never going to say that out loud, _ but it’s true.

Steve thinks about what time it is, about how FRIDAY had told him there were nearly twelve hours to go before Sergeant Barnes hit even the earliest stage of heat.  

He thinks about the clench of Tony’s jaw when he asked about it last week, and how it could have been so much worse.  (He thinks about hand-prints burned into a paper coffee mug, and shivers.)

He thinks about Tony providing a home for all the Avengers, not once, but twice, even when he stopped being formally part of the team.  He also thinks about Tony providing safe haven for Bucky, despite all the - all the _everything._

He thinks about Tony casually making good on an absently-offered promise to hang his paintings somewhere prominent, and how the only ones that didn’t make it into the cafe on five are the lioness, the fox, and the hyena.  And he thinks about how Tony has, twice now, cared for him and grounded him during panic attacks.  

He thinks,  _ to heck with it,  _ and drops to his knees.  

 

* * *

 

“Do me a favor?” he asks later, shirtless and lying on a hard, marble-tiled floor.  It’s a little cool, and Steve shivers as Tony runs long-fingered engineer’s hands through his hair.

Also, his chest is sticky.  It’s evaporating, which is not helping his chill.

“Hmm?”  Tony doesn’t look up so much as he slightly wobbles a lazy head in Steve’s direction, and Steve smiles, pleased with himself.   _ I did that. _

“When this is done,” Steve starts, only to feel Tony jerk beside him.  “The  _ heat, _ I mean,” he clarifies hastily, and Tony relaxes again.  “When _ the heat _ is done...  You know, all I’m going to want is you.”  

“Hmmm.”  Tony tugs lightly on Steve’s hair as he cards through it.  It’s still shaggy because, in the hustle of the Hill Offensive, Steve hasn’t had time to get it cut.

“Can I come to you?” Steve asks, propping himself up on his forearms.  

“Mm-hm,” Tony nods, pleased, and pulls a little harder on Steve’s hair.  

Steve smiles to himself, and phrases the next bit carefully.  It has to come out  _ just right... _  “When I do,” he asks, voice a tinge shaky, “I have a request.  You might not be interested, and tell me if you’re not, but…  It would mean a lot…”

Tony’s hands still, and he levers himself upwards on one arm to look at Steve.  He starts to say, “Anything,” but his voice chokes off halfway through the word, so that it comes out, “Anyhhkk -”

Steve presses his forehead down against Tony’s faded t-shirt, mouthing at the cotton.  He asks, “Will you take me apart?”

Tony’s hands stutter over Steve’s head, and he sounds almost panicked.  “What?”

Steve grits his teeth, because he  _ hates  _ talking like this, and he’s  _ so bad at it.   _ But he’d been thinking about it on the ride down, and practicing into the wind for the last half of the trip, and he knows that if he clenches his jaw the words are more likely to come out right.  

“I want you to work me open with your tongue,” he specifies, voice steely. “I want you to put your fingers in me, and then your dick, and then your knot, and I want you to take your time doing it.  I want you to put marks on me that take a day or two to fade, even with my metabolism.  I want to feel aches the next day and know that those are from you taking care of me.  And I want to not have to say anything when I show up here to let you know I’m  _ looking  _ for that.”  He shrugs, a default, defensive gestures that says,  _ don’t look at this too closely. _  “So I’m asking now.”

And then, wincing, he cracks one eyelid to peak at the response. 

Tony’s eyes are wide and blown, his mouth dropped open.  His free hand is pressing at his chest exactly where the reactor used to sit.

“Holy shit,” he says, voice husky.

Steve opens the other eye hopefully.  “Is that a yes?”

 

* * *

 

He leaves Tony in the workshop at least pretending to be productive, and takes a shower before bed.  He asks FRIDAY to set an alarm, but really, he’ll be awake on his own long before he has to be.

Ten hours until the heat.

 

* * *

 

Bucky laughs himself sick when he sees the flowers and chocolates, an hour before the heat’s scheduled to start.  Steve blushes even pinker than the chrysanthemums, but holds his ground.  “I’m honored to be here,” he says stubbornly.  “The least I can do is let you know that.”

Bucky must remember enough to correctly identify the unmovable clench of his jaw, because he takes the flowers out of Steve’s hand without any further argument.  He sets them in a clear space on the bookshelf, just as Steve had predicted; there just isn’t room on the bedside table.

Then it gets awkward.

What do you say to a guy while you’re trapped in a room with him, unable to leave because he’s a prisoner, waiting for his body to go haywire so that you both start making whoopie?

_ Geeze. _

Steve wanders over the window, looking out with his hands tucked in his pockets.  It’s early - around eight - but the sun is already up, still a bit slanted as it crosses the city, casting rectangular shadows everywhere.  Steve thinks briefly about painting it, then sets the thought aside; he’s got plenty of things to work on for now, his painting backlog is ridiculous already...

“Can I getcha anything to drink?” Bucky offers.  “There’s, uh…”  He comes up beside Steve, mimicking his posture, and grimaces.  “Water.  There’s pretty much just water, sorry.”

Steve pauses, thinking about it for the first time.  “Do they bring you up a tray, or…?”

“No, there’s a dumbwaiter,” Bucky says, lighting up.  “Pretty cool, actually, I’m just one of the stops on the way up to the penthouse.  I just order up on the tablet -”  He gestures awkwardly to the omnipresent tablet with his elbow, not taking either hand out of his pocket.  “- and they send it right up.”

Steve turns and looks at him full-on, sure that he heard it correctly, but not quite able to  _ believe  _ it.  “There’s a dumbwaiter,” he repeats slowly, distinctly.

Bucky smirks.  “Yuuuuup.”

Steve sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose.  

Bucky snickers.  After a moment, Steve sees the humor in the situation, and chuckles along with him.  “Oh my god, Bucky.  How long have you known exactly how to get out of this place?”

“Since about five minutes after Stark showed me around.”

_ “Jesus.” _

“I figured I’d better not tell ‘im,” Bucky shrugs.  “Might be bad for his ego.”  

Bucky’s deadpan is as good as it was before the war, really.  Steve laughs full out this time, cackling hysterically and slapping his chest, toppling over to bump against Bucky’s hard left shoulder.   _ “Jesus,”  _ he repeats.  “And here I was worried about you!”

“I told ya,” Bucky says, reaching out and grasping his shoulder with his metal hand.  Steve looks up into his eyes, startled, and sees a familiar warm expression that he’d thought lost to time and tragedy.  There’s even that flicker of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.  “I know I’m safe here.”

Steve doesn’t have the words to answer that, but he figures it’s probably all right there on his face, anyway

 

* * *

 

“So, do you want to, uh… play… cards…?  I think FRIDAY could count points for -”

“I will suck your dick  _ right now  _ if it means you don’t finish that sentence.”

“Awww, you don’t have to do that, Bucky -”

“Good.”

“- You’ll be doing it soon enough as it is, anyway.”

_ “Fuck you, _ Rogers.”

The resultant roughhousing takes up a good five minutes.

 

* * *

 

“So what’s with the bringing me flowers and chocolates, buddy?  You know you don’t need to do that crap for me.”

Steve shrugs, sitting cross-legged on the bed.  They are, in fact, playing cards, and they’re organizing the hands Bucky’s just dealt out like they don’t both have the cards memorized already.  “I was just thinkin’ about how to show respect,” Steve insists, because that’s what he’d said the last two times, too.

“Yeah, but you don’t have to  _ do  _ that with me.”  And this is why Steve’s not taking offense to the repeated question:  because Bucky seems honestly confused by the idea that someone would bring him courting gifts.  Because Bucky doesn’t seem to think he  _ deserves  _ them.

Forget _ that. _

Steve will bring Bucky flowers  _ every single time. _

“I want to,” Steve says, and his tone makes it clear that that’s the end of the discussion.  One nice thing about being a super-Alpha:  when he wants a discussion to end, it pretty much always does.

Bucky shifts his posture a little, head tilting to the side.

“Bucky?” Steve asks, because that looks an awful lot like…

Bucky hesitates, then shakes his head, swallowing, eyes wide.  “Almost,” he says. “Not quite.”

Steve isn’t convinced that’s the truth, but if Bucky wants to pretend he didn’t just start getting wet, Steve isn’t going to be the one to call him out on it.  He watches to see what Bucky will do next, instead.

Which is, clear his throat and twitch his shoulders.  He also  _ licks his lips,  _ which is not fair, before asking, “Do you have any sixes?”

Steve looks down at the six sitting in the middle of his hand, then back up at Bucky.  “Go fish,” he says cheerfully.

 

* * *

 

“You  _ son of a bitch, how long  _ have you been holding those?!”

Steve grins as obnoxiously as he knows how - which is  _ very  _ obnoxiously, for the record.  “Since the first deal,” he answers innocently.  “Why, were you looking for some?”

The cards go flying everywhere as Bucky tackles him.  Steve is laughing, blocking half-hearted punches and whole-hearted pinches, plus one purple nurple that Bucky gets in before Steve manages to get a hand in the hair and pull like an angry schoolgirl.

He’s  _ expecting  _ a yowl and retaliatory kick.  What he  _ gets  _ is a whine and panting, which is when Steve realizes that it really is  _ that time. _

“Buck,” he says, swallowing, and Bucky whines again.  Steve runs his hand down Bucky’s cheek, thumb falling over his lips.  Bucky’s mouth opens, seemingly without thought, and he sucks the thumb in, biting lightly as he licks at it.

Steve feels like his stomach has twisted around and is trying to escape right out through his back.  He makes a short pained noise, leaning in to nuzzle at Bucky’s neck.

Bucky gasps, his head tilting back automatically to give Steve more access.

“Doing all right?” Steve asks, voice low because he’s speaking right into Bucky’s ear.  “Is this - you.  You said the, uh… the fear of, well, of Alphas… you said it recedes with the heat?”

Bucky whimpers again, which is  _ sort of  _ an answer.

“You afraid right now, Buck?” he asks anyway, because he’d rather be overly cautious with this than  _ not cautious enough.  _

Bucky shakes his head, watching him through half-lidded eyes.

Wait.

Half-lidded, or  _ narrowed?  _

Steve pulls back, studying Bucky’s expression, and…  Bucky is definitely studying him.  He frowns.  “Bucky?”

A very faint smirk crosses Bucky’s mouth, and his left arm shoots out to sock Steve in the pec.  

“OW!  Damnit, Bucky!  You could have just said, ‘Not yet!’”  Steve rubs his chest, where he will  _ definitely have a bruise,  _ as Bucky leans back on his right elbow to reach for the side-table with his left hand.  Steve catches a whiff of a faint, musty, fruity smell, and squirms as he remembers what it is.

“That wasn’t a ‘not yet’, it was for  _ cheating,” _ Bucky tells him, and Steve reflects that it’s a little weird that Bucky’s actual  _ smiles  _ are so few, and far-between, and  _ quiet,  _ but his  _ smirks  _ are frequent and  _ loud.   _ Bucky pulls back up to seated with a small black hair-elastic which he passes to Steve before turning to so that his back is to Steve, his legs over the edge of the bed.  “Do me up, would ya?” he asks.  “It’s one of those things which is hard to manage with the metal hand.”

It feels very naked, to reach out and touch Bucky’s hair like this, Steve thinks.  Yes, he pulled it just a minute ago, but this is different.  He runs his hands through the dark locks.  Very clean and deliciously silky, they smell faintly of apricots; Steve thinks someone must have provided Bucky with some sort of conditioner.  Touching as gently as he can, Steve gathers the hair up into one hand, then moves the elastic to his fingers and pulls the lot of it through.

“Three loops,” Bucky say, “Or four is even better.  I kinda want it to stay back.”

Steve obligingly twists the elastic tight and pulls it through three more times, although it barely makes the fourth - Bucky’s hair is thick.  He smooths it a couple times, then sits back.  “All set,” he says, and his voice is raspy and rough.

Bucky jerks his head around, and his hair bobbles with the motion.  “Alright, Steve?” he asks, tilting his head to the side so that the long line of his throat is on display.  Steve stares and tries to decide whether it’s deliberate or subconscious, because there is  _ no way  _ that move was pure coincidence.

_ Deliberate,  _ he finally decides, and swallows, shaking it off.  “Yeah, I’m good, Bucky.”

Given his position and posture, given the mood in the air, given how thrown Steve is by the raw sensuality Bucky’s been giving off for the last few minutes….  Given all that, the movement of Bucky’s mouth  _ should  _ be another smirk, but it isn’t; instead, it’s another of those flickering, shy little smiles, and it goes through Steve just like the pneumonia used to:  sharp and fast, and making him weak all over.

He reaches out, touching lightly along Bucky’s temple with the first two fingers of his right hand, then slowly moving them down along Bucky’s cheek, causing him to shiver and gasp satisfyingly.  Slowly, carefully, Steve curls his hand around the base of Bucky’s neck, thumb lying flat in front of the ear.

Bucky is trembling, very faintly. 

“Are  _ you  _ okay, Bucky?”

Bucky opens his mouth to reply, but then hesitates, and shudders all over.   _ “Please,”  _ he says instead, but it's still an answer, anyway.

Steve leans in.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to magic_gps for the beta, and for holding my hand and reassuring me that the parts I was worried about don't actually suck.
> 
> EDIT:
> 
> HOLY SHIT, LOOK AT THIS! This fic now has art to go with it! Many thanks to the spectacular SilentWalrus, whose fic blows mine completely out of the water. Check this out! <https://chibisquirt.tumblr.com/post/157517297347/alright-ive-been-hoarding-this-long-enough>


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to magic_gps for the beta; any mistakes are mine, from fidgiting with this after it should have been done. Brush your teeth after reading this, y'all, 'cause it is pretty much *pure* *sugar*.
> 
> Oh, and: [Tony's shirt](http://www.imgrum.net/media/1255184829831012196_38895598).

 

“So!  How was it?” Tony asks, once Steve has showered and made it up to the penthouse.  He’s lounging - of course - next to the coffeepot, paging through something on a tablet, looking like black licorice:  long, dark, and delicious.  His legs are encased in tight - but not skinny - black jeans, and a loose shirt that appears to have _possibly_ had sleeves once upon a time hangs from his well-defined shoulders.  

The shirt has a faded round decal that must, once upon a time, have represented Steve’s _shield,_ and that -

Steve had no idea that would hit him so hard, but it, uh…  _Wow._  

It definitely does.  

He swallows against the sudden dry-mouth.

“Went fine,” he says, eyes tracking downward again.  Tony’s wearing boots, he notices.  Motorcycle boots.  With heels.  And pointy toes.  Steve has a sudden vivid memory of Tony easing rich Italian leather off over his long, strong arches, and swallows again.

Tony nods.  “Anything exciting happen?” he asks, then winces, probably because he's just realized what he was asking.

Steve shakes his head, anyway, then hesitates and changes it to a nod.  Tony’s eyebrows shoot up.  “Something exciting _did_ happen?”

Steve shrugs, running a hand through his hair, which he _really_ needs to cut.  “A silence can be as meaningful as a noise, right?” he asks, and Tony, used to listening to engines, gets it.  He starts to get the expression he wears around puzzles - part greedy, part nosey, part childlike wonder - and then, abruptly, remembers that Steve’s still standing there exhausted, and shuts it down.  

“Right,” Tony says.  “You didn’t want to think - and, honestly, Steve, you look kinda… _done_ _.”_  Steve nods.  “Come upstairs - no, wait; have you eaten?”

Steve raises a hand and wobbles it back and forth.  “Protein shakes,” he says.

Tony thinks about it, then shrugs.  “Eh, good enough.  C’mon, up -”

Steve allows himself to be herded upstairs.  

 

* * *

 

“Right,” Tony says, sitting on the floor at Steve’s feet and carefully easing his shoes and socks off.  “So, you didn’t want to think - which, hey, I can completely understand - and you wanted - well, you remember what you wanted -”

Steve smiles, and Tony looks up in time to see it, blushes, and looks back down.  

“So, well, I thought about it - okay, I thought about it a _lot,_ I mean _Jesus, Steve -_ but what I was thinking was - oh, thank you for the flowers, by the way, but seriously, _what the fuck?_ \- what I was thinking was, well... Here.”  Tony puts Steve’s shoes and socks over by the wall and stands up, nervous.  He takes a small box off the nightstand - it’s wrapped in fancy, matte paper, and sized suspiciously like a jewelry box - and hands it to Steve.  “It’s a present,” he explains.  

Steve smiles slowly up at him.  “You got me a present?” he repeats, astonished and touched.

He knows he threw Tony a curveball - he did it deliberately, a cautious testing of the waters to see where they stood and how Tony would react - and in retrospect, it probably shouldn’t surprise him that Tony’s reaction to that uncertainty is some kind of material object.  That’s basically Tony’s _modus operandi._

But somehow, he didn’t put two and two together in time to anticipate a _present,_ and he _definitely_ didn’t anticipate the kind of present that comes in what looks like a _jewelry box._

Tony rubs his hands against his shirt, and Steve can’t stop his eyes from tracking helplessly to the faded decal again.  His mouth waters, and he swallows.  “You might not like it,” Tony warns, hands dancing in the air.  “I mean - if you don’t, that’s fine, we’ll do something else -”

“Can I see it?”  Steve tries not to look to much like a kid in a candy store, but he has _limits,_ geeze.  

“Yes, please, open it!  Don’t keep me in suspense, here.”  Tony watches carefully as Steve pulls happily at the ribbon wrapped around the box and tears into the paper.  “If you _do_ like it,” he says, eyes intent, “There can always be more.  I just - you wanted to not think, and I thought, if you had something like this, that _might_ help?  Or it might not!  If you don’t like it, I mean, there’s other - I can re-use the materials, it’s not a big...”  

It _is_ a jewelry box, the gray velveteen lid arching up an inch and a half from the base; the box itself is a bit larger than the palm of Steve’s hand (admittedly, a large palm), perhaps the right size for a bracelet, or a moderately-sized pendant.  Feeling unaccountably nervous, Steve opens it with a creak.

He’s not sure what he was expecting; from the size of the box, he’d been half-expecting a pair of Iron Man-style bracelets, like the ones Tony uses to call the armor.  At the outside, he’d been expecting a fancy variant on dog tags.  This is definitely nothing like either of those.

Hands delicate, eyes huge, he reaches into the box, lifting out one filigree gold head of the thing, the coppery chain hanging behind it.  He can tell in an instant that it’s Tony’s design:  some consistency of design, the same art deco influences like he’s seen in the armor, the fine but simple workmanship - Steve isn’t sure how he knows, but he’s certain.  He’d even be willing to bet that these were made in the workshop at the Tower.

They’re nipple clamps.

He would never, not in a _thousand years -_ and _especially_ not after getting a sense of what Tony likes in bed - he would never have expected nipple clamps.  His pulse surges in his ears.

“Jesus, Tony,” he breathes.  “They’re not _actually_ gold and copper, are they?”  

He knows they’re not.  

They look like it - the little alligator-type heads are gold, styled like some kind of animal with the eyes made of brilliant blue stones that Steve is terrified might be sapphires.  Each head - shaped like chubby, friendly-faced dragons - bears three very fine chains in the red and yellow metals dangling beneath it, each of _those_ finer chains spouting three smaller blue stones.  The connecting chain is _also_ a red metal, but Steve is _sure_ it’s not copper, because he can _break_ copper.

“They’re - no, they’re alloys.  Did you want to know…?”

“I don’t need to,” Steve shakes his head, “And I’m probably too tired to understand anything technical, anyway.  I can tell you made them, though.”  Cautiously, Steve puts pressure on the mechanism of the clamp he’s holding, and the happy little mouth of it opens easily.  He touches the inside with one carefully delicate finger, and discovers a gel-like pad that will likely be very gentle, as long as no pressure is applied.

But of course, the clamps are adjustable - they have discreet little wheels on the sides, helpfully camouflaged with more blue stones - and the weight itself will have an effect.  

“They’re in my colors,” Steve says, voice quiet.

“Are they?” Tony sounds surprised.  “Not really.  I mean, red and blue, yes, but it’s gold, not platinum.”

“Or silver.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, silver tarnishes - no, I just - I wanted them to look good on you,” Tony explains.  “Gold for your hair, blue for your eyes.”

“And the red?” Steve asks, smiling wryly.  “I got polkadots somewhere?”

“No, you -”  Tony reaches out, cupping Steve’s chin so that his thumb rests - oh.  

So that his thumb rests right under Steve’s _mouth_.

“They’re going to look fantastic against your skin,” Tony murmurs, flushed.

“They’re not real sapphires, are they?” Steve asks, voice breathier than intended, pulling the other clamp out of the box and balancing them in his hand.  

Tony hesitates, and Steve straightens in suspicion.

_“Tony...”_

“No, it’s not -!  It’s not what you think,” Tony starts.  

“So you’re saying you _didn’t_ use real precious gems in your handcrafted nipple clamps?”

“Ehhhhhh...” Tony squeaks, wincing, and Steve huffs.

“Real or imitation, Tony?”

“Technically...?  Real.  But!  Buuut…  They were created in a lab.”

Steve looks at him evenly.  

“Our lab, actually, on the seventeenth floor; they are literally the best stones I had handy.  Dr. Krimsha in Materials gave up a really nice raise for a couple of years in exchange for getting a setup, and it’s paid back handsomely even though I _know_ he’s pocketed a couple of the rubies -”  He breaks off.  “They’re not too much.  I _promise_ you; even if you don’t like them and it turns out to be a waste, I _promise_ you, they aren’t too much.”  Tony brushes Steve’s hair out of his eyes.  “I knew you wouldn’t like that, so I _didn’t."_

 _It would have bothered me,_ Steve thinks, swallowing yet again and holding the clamps up.  “Well,” he says, “As it happens…  I _do_ like them.”  

Tony’s face lights up.  “Yeah?”  He sways closer and kisses Steve’s forehead, and Steve tilts his chin up to get one on the lips, too.  "Those your kind of thing?"

“Actually...  No idea,” he admits against Tony’s mouth, laughing.  “Never tried ‘em before.  But c’mon - I’m excited to find out.”

 

* * *

 

It goes well, which is frankly a relief.

The clamps are a success - a huge success, actually.  The sensation was one thing - and very nice all on its own - but the _visual_ effect...

 

_Tony pulled back his mouth from where he had been sucking at the line of Steve’s abs, looking up at the dangling sapphires where they gently chimed against each other with every shivering breath.  “Gorgeous,” he breathed.  “Purely gorgeous, Jesus.  How did I get so lucky?”_

_Steve pulled one arm from behind his head, making grabbing-hands at Tony with a pout._ “Was _it luck?  Or skill?” he asked, managing to catch his hand behind Tony’s neck and pulling his head back down._

_“Hmmm,” Tony said.  “You decide.”_

 

It was definitely skill, by the way.  

Just for the record.

Steve falls asleep pretty much immediately after Tony finishes, on account of being exhausted: happily, bonelessly relaxed and thoroughly spent.  

(Several times.)

(Not that he’s bragging.)

 

* * *

 

He wakes feeling more well-rested than he’s felt in years, limbs heavy, head slightly achy with too much sleep.  He sits up in the bed, looking around the empty room.  There’s a stack of clothing on the dresser with a note pinned to it; betting it’s for him, he gets up and wanders over.  

 

> _Dear Steve,_
> 
> _Good morning, sleepyhead!  I broke into your apartment to bring you these, and I’m not sorry._

Tony actually took the time to draw a winking smiley-face there. 

> _I’m probably downstairs drinking coffee and waiting for breakfast to be delivered; I ordered from that absolutely terrible diner you like, so you’re welcome.  If you’re still in bed when it gets here, I’m waking you up with a bucket of water, fair warning._

> _Love,_
> 
> _Tony_

Steve smiles dazedly at the note, at the small mess of faint gray marks and dots around the closing lines, as if Tony had hesitated for a long time before writing it.

 _Love, Tony,_ the words echo in Steve's mind.   _Love.  Tony._

Steve's grinning furiously as he dresses and goes down the stairs.  Maybe Tony still can’t _say_ it first, but seeing him _writing_ it first is still pretty damned amazing.

 

* * *

 

“So what was the silence?” Tony asks, sitting down at the table with a freshly-topped-up mug and the bottle of boysenberry syrup.  

“Hmm?” Steve asks, slicing his waffles into one-inch squares before reaching for the maple.  

“I asked you if anything interesting happened,” Tony reminds him, “And you said yes, because a silence can mean as much as a noise.  Right?”  Tony does not slice his waffles before using the syrup, which frankly baffles Steve.  (How can the waffles absorb the syrup if you don’t expose the spongy insides…?)  Tony fills every square compartment with the syrup, instead, which, granted, is somewhat satisfying visually with a dark syrup like the boysenberry, but _still...._

“Right,” Steve says, now reaching for the butter.  He spreads it on the heaping pile of carbs and thinks about how to say it.  “The first heat, last month…” he starts slowly, “Bucky… changed… over the course of it.  He became…”  He grimaces.  “I know how this sounds, but he really did become more like the Bucky I know.  And - according to him - that’s not a coincidence; apparently, the heat tapped into his more deeply held personality traits, letting the more recent brainwashing…”  Steve moves his fork in a dismissive arc through the air.  “...slide away?”

“Makes sense,” Tony shrugs, and Steve looks up, surprised.  “What?  You don’t think it makes sense?”

“Not really,” Steve admits.  (Very, very privately, where neither Tony nor Bucky will ever, _ever_  know, Steve still thinks that makes it sound like he has a Magical Healing Knot, like in that Japanese cartoon that Clint and Wanda had been watching together.  It seems pretty silly, honestly.)

“Hmm.”  Tony takes a bite of sausage, tapping his free hand thoughtfully against the table.  He swallows, then suggests, “It might be an Omega thing,” which Steve doesn’t expect him to say at all.  

“An Omega thing?”

Tony shrugs, sips his coffee, and doesn’t meet his eyes.  “You haven’t really experienced a heat from the inside.”  He twitches his head to the side, pokes at his waffles with his fork.  “I have.”

Steve gets the mental image of Tony, as blissed-out and boneless as Bucky was twenty-four hours ago.  It’s breathtakingly distracting.  

“And as the only guy in the room - possibly in the entire city - who has experienced both Omega and Alpha pheromone whammies -”  That is not the technical term, but it is evocative; Fight and Rut both knock you out of control hard and fast enough that _wham_ is about what it feels like.  “- I have to tell you, the Alphas don’t have anything compared to the O’s.”

“Really?”

 _“Oh,_ yeah.”  Tony shivers.  “Being in heat is…  There’s nothing like it.  As primal as Fight gets, you can still control it with sufficient focus.”  Steve nods from side to side, because while that’s technically true, it’s extraordinarily difficult.  A Fight state is a valid defense against murder charges in at least ten states, still.  “Okay.  But there _is no_ controlling Heat.  Heat is…  you’re _gone._ All that’s left is this little core of you…”  He takes in Steve’s expression.  “I’m explaining this badly.”

“No!” Steve protests automatically.  “It’s just…  You’re saying almost exactly what Bucky said.”  

“So, like I said, then,” Tony shrugs.  “Omega thing.”

“Huh.”  Steve toys with his eggs - over easy, which he can never manage on his own, so he gets them whenever he goes to a diner - and thinks about what Tony’s saying.  He feels illogically guilty about it...

“So!  You said,  _a silence;_ I take it there was no change this time?”

Steve shakes it off.  “Yeah, I was expecting - well, hoping - well..."  He shrugs.   _"You_ know.  Anyway.  I thought he might get a little more of himself back, more memories or something.  Eventually, he might feel like he's thrown off their - HYDRA's - hold, entirely."  He pokes at his waffles again, disappointed.  "Instead, he was pretty much the same all through it.  Just, you know…”  He waggles his head awkwardly, but Tony keeps blinking blankly at him, so he spells out, “...heated up.”

Tony snickers.

“Stop that.”  But Steve has to hide his smile behind his coffee.

Tony leans back in his chair, lifting his own mug in front of his face.  "Well, there's always next month," he says offhand, and Steve sits up so straight he spills hot coffee in his lap.  "What?  What'd I say?"

"You talked about me joining Bucky for a heat without sounding worried about it," Steve tells him, staring.

Tony looks down, hiding his face, and slouches, propping one knee up with a foot on the edge of the chair like a teenager, kicking the other one straight out to the side.  "Maybe I got used to the idea," he mutters, glaring at the corner of the room.

It's totally juvenile, and really should not be adorable at all.  

Steve leans back and studies him.  "You know..." he says finally, "I don't think you could have sat like that a month ago.  I think I'm good for your flexibility."

Tony looks down at how his leg is folded back against him and at what his posture is showing off to Steve, then hastily puts both feet back on the floor.

And blushes.

Steve grins, and goes back to his waffles and runny eggs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe this chapter is 2,400 words and seems short to me. Ugh, what am I doing with my life?
> 
> GUYS. I was SUPER DUPER NERVOUS about this one! I was going for schmoopy??? *anxious eyes*
> 
> Notes from this chapter!
> 
> Steve is completely wrong about how to eat waffles, which is good, because that's clearly the dividing line keeping him from being a Mary Sue. (In his defense, Steve didn't really meet waffles until this millennium, whereas flapjacks he'd known since childhood, and those *do* absorb the syrup better if you cut them.)
> 
> And as far as I know, there is no anime with a Magical Healing Penis (or Knot) in it, but if there were, Clint and Wanda would DEFINITELY watch it together. 
> 
> But let's be honest, if you tell me there is one, _I will believe you._


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: Exceptional gratitude to both Valmasy and magic_gps for the beta on this chapter!

Given the recent success of the Hill Offensive, they all take some time off.  

Steve does, reluctantly, go back up to the HQ - he has to support the rest of the team, and he and Tony both understand that.  “Wanda -” Tony says in his bluffing voice.  “I’m sure she’ll need you.”

Steve tilts his head at him, and Tony looks away before watching him out of the corner of his eyes.  “And maybe Natasha,” he adds, quietly.

Steve feels vaguely, inexplicably, guilty, again.  

He does check in with Bucky before he leaves, though… 

 

_“Is this the part where you visit me because you’re worried I’m going to think you raped me?”_

_“No!”_

_It actually is._

_“You didn’t,” Bucky says calmly, answering the question even though he’s denying asking it.  “You were exactly what I was looking for.  Actually…”  He looks down, then up again through his lashes, which does_ not help.   _“...you were more than perfect.”_

_Steve knows he’s usually the one to worry, but Bucky really does look fine.  In fact…_

_Steve thinks that_ might _be a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth._

_He opens his mouth, then changes what he was going to say abruptly.  “Wanna play cards?”_

_Bucky narrows his eyes, suspicious.  “You_ cheat.”

_“So do you!”_

_“Yeah, but_ I’m _good enough you don’t catch me!”_

_Steve grins wildly, half a dozen remembered arguments from their childhood echoing through his mind.  “Wanna bet?”_

_So then they play cards, sitting on the floor because Bucky doesn’t have a table big enough to spread the cards out.  Buck only has the one deck, so Steve offers to go to his room to get another; Bucky, glaring and lip curled, insists that Steve buy two brand-new packs and bring them back still-sealed._

_Tony shows up halfway through the game.  “What are you doing?  That’s not poker.”_

_“What would we bet with?” Bucky asks, snorting._

_“Spite and Malice,” Steve tells him._

_Tony throws him a baffled look and waits expectantly._

_“What?” Bucky asks Tony while playing a five and six onto the center pile, plus the seven off of the small deck beside him, the big jerk.  Flipping the top card reveals an ace, which he puts into the center in a new pile._

_“Why are we spiteful and full of malice?  I mean, that’s my default state, I’m just curious.”_

_“It’s the name of the game,” Steve says, watching glumly as Bucky puts his last card - an eight - on the first pile, draws five new cards, and triumphantly slaps a two on top of the ace.  “Aw, damn it, Buck!”_

_“Sucks to be you,” Bucky says flippantly, dropping a three on top of the two before following it with the four from his pay-off deck._

_Steve sighs.  “That would be where the name comes from,” he tells Tony._

_“I can see that.  Deal me in on the next round?”_

_“You don’t even know how to play,” Bucky says._

_“You don’t know that.”_

_“You’d never even_ heard _of it, thirty seconds ago,” Steve snaps, breathing out in relief as Bucky discards into one of the piles on his left.  “Finally!”_

_“I’m a genius,” Tony says as Steve draws, calls out triumphantly, and plays an ace for his two to go on.  “I’ll figure it out.”_

 

It turns out that being a genius doesn’t help you much when the other two people are cheating furiously, though.

 

* * *

 

Steve rests casually against the half-wall demarcating the sparring area from the rest of the gym, arms folded in front of him, watching Natasha dance deadly against the holograms.  They fall with ridiculous speed: five, four, three, dodge, duck, strike back, two, one, zero.  When they’re gone, she freezes, spine straight and gaze level, facing away from him.  He has absolutely no doubt she knows he’s there.

Silently, he puts the small, heliotrope-colored gift bag on the wall beside him.

“What is it?” she asks, and he winces.  She doesn’t sound pissed off, but then, she doesn’t sound anything - which is, itself, usually a sign that she’s pissed off.

“Peace offering,” he says.

She turns, and then raises her eyebrows.  “Do we need one?” she asks, tilting her head to the side.  He knows that tone, though; he heard it during the battle of Manhattan.   _“I don’t see how that’s a party,” she said…_

...right before she partied _hard_ all over the Chitauri.

So, yes, she _is_ lying.

“Well, I was gonna ask you that,” he says, “But then you spent a month conspicuously not talking to me, so I figured that was the answer.”

She bows her head.

When she looks up, she doesn’t hesitate at all before walking over and picking up the peace offering.  “No,” she says.  “We’re okay.”  She flicks an eyebrow.  “I just had to work through it.”

“Well,” Steve says, nodding to the petal pink nail polish she’s pulling out, “you can tell me all about it over tea.”

Nat looks down again, then hops the wall and throws him into a hug.

 

* * *

 

“So, are you willing to start talking to me about it?” Steve asks, carefully looking only at the heavily-calloused foot in front of him as he strokes downward with the nail polish brush.  

“Good phrasing,” Nat says, and he hears her make a movement in front of him.  “Not ‘do I _want_ to’, but ‘am I willing.’  Just a little pushy.”  She sounds like that’s a good thing.

“I thought it was worth pushing over,” he says, smoothing out the first coat over the first toe and re-dipping the brush before moving on to the others.  The pedicure-sponges (which is probably, Steve thinks, not the actual name for them) sticking out between her toes are bright sky blue.  

“Hmm.”  Nat shifts her upper body again, and this time Steve flicks his gaze up to see her lean back on her elbows, braced against her deck chair and glaring at the sky.  

They’re on the back patio, ostensibly on the grounds that it’s a beautiful day right at the beginning of fall, and it would be a shame to miss the weather.  And while that happens to be true - the leaves are just barely starting to turn, and the breeze has taken on that crisp, granny-smith briskness that Steve loves so much - the real reason they’re out here is that sometimes other Avengers come out here, and Nat wants them to be traumatized by seeing Steve do her nails.

Nat has a very odd relationship with the rest of the team, sometimes.

On the other hand, Steve is out here with her of his own free will, and it’s not like he’s _opposed_ to occasionally startling the team.  (Clint, in particular, tends to make very satisfying horrified-noises.)   

“So?” he prompts when she’s been quiet for too long.  He sets her foot down, gently, on the flagstones, picking the other one up and plopping it in his lap.

“Hmm,” she says again, but follows it this time with a sigh and sitting up.  “You’ve figured out that we knew each other,” she says.

He has.  “I kinda put it together when he called you Natalia without having been introduced, and then made love to you,” Steve agrees, keeping his voice very even.

He might still be mad about finding out that way.

She makes a noise in her throat, looking away.

“He said you… ended it,” Steve prompts her.  “Whatever it was?”

“It was an infatuation,” she tells him, her voice dry, but her eyes skirt away once, briefly, before meeting his, and he realizes she’s embarrassed.

“You don’t think he really loved you?”

She shakes her head, quickly, a jerky motion from a normally hyper-graceful woman.  “I think _I_ didn’t really love _him,”_ she corrects, voice hollow.

Oh.

“Oh,” he repeats out loud, setting her left foot back down beside the right.  He leans back in his chair, studying her, setting the nail polish back on the patio table with the lid on.  “Tell me more?”

She repeats the jerky head shake, but it doesn’t mean _no._ Steve thinks it might actually mean the same thing as a shrug does from him: _Don’t look over here.  Don’t read too much into what I’m about to say.  Don’t shame me for this._

“He was my trainer,” she says, watching the birds that hop around the edge of the patio, looking for crumbs.

Steve knew that; she’d told him during that first heat, the first time he’d confronted her about this.

“He was good at it,” he guesses.  Except, it’s not really a guess; Bucky has always been good with kids, especially little girls.  And Steve’s seen him fight…

“He was good at everything,” she agrees, voice dry with some strong emotion - chagrin?  Embarrassment?  Longing?

No way to know.

“And you had a crush,” he guesses - or rather, not-guesses - again.  She told him as much earlier in the conversation.

She nods like it was a question, anyway.

“Did he know?”

“Not at first,” she says.  She reaches for the mixing bowl of warm water on the patio table as a distraction, pulling it closer to her.  

Then she motions with a summoning-gesture, and Steve obligingly stretches his leg into her lap.  He’s already barefoot, shoes and socks neatly set to the side, so she only needs to roll up the cuff of his jeans before wiping his foot off with the warm washcloth from the bowl.

“At first he was…”  She snorts.  “Are you familiar with the concept of _senpai?”_

He shakes his head.

“All I wanted was for him to notice me,” she says, wiping between each of his toes.  “I was better than the other girls, even then; we all knew it.  He should have seen that I was special, but he never treated me any differently.”

Privately, Steve doesn’t think that’s surprising.  Recognising the superior child would have meant ignoring one of the other ones, and if Bucky were inclined to do that, he would never have been friends with Steve in the first place.

“I found out later that he was ordered not to,” Natasha adds, “But by then it was too late.”  She looks up at Steve and quirks her mouth into a self-mocking smile.  “My pride was stung,” she tells him, “I had to be the best.”

“So you showed off some?” he guesses, because he can see it:  Tiny, big-mouthed, baby Natasha, a balletic flurry of knives, gangly and awkward in her pubescence, but as fierce as a girl as the woman he knows is, today.  

“I showed off,” she agrees, reaching for the pedicure sponges and the powder blue polish she’d selected for him.  “It worked, by the way.”  She unscrews the cap.  “I got private lessons.”

Even all these years later, she still sounds smug when she says it.

“So he did notice you.”  It’s Steve’s turn to lean back in his deck chair, looking at the sky.

“Not at all,” she says, voice at its huskiest, smile askew _._ “He treated me like any other student.”  She rolls her eyes and finishes his pinky-toe.  “I was furious, of course.  Determined to get his attention.”

“How old were you?”

She shrugs and dodges the question.  “There’s some vagueness in the memories… Old enough to have a body, but young enough for the first impression to be childlike if you’re -” She glances up at him through her lashes.  “- an _experienced soldier.”_

She is not referring to violence.

“So what did you do?”  Somehow, Steve can’t imagine awkward-teenager Natasha just sitting back and accepting her fate.

She jerks her head again, making her hair fly around her cheeks.  “The goal of the training was to make me better; eventually, I took him to the mat.”  She finishes, setting his left foot down, and picks up his right, repeating the process.  “When I was on top of him, I kissed him,” she says while moving, which means her voice is distorted regardless of tone.  That’s not technically a lie, of course.

“And what did he do?”  Steve picks up his cup of tea - china cup, matching saucer, floral patterns; he’s not sure where Nat got these cups, because they’re not kept in the kitchen - and sips.  

“The first time?  Froze.”  She focuses very hard on washing his foot.  “I pulled back, blushing furiously, and the lesson continued as if nothing had happened.  But the second time…”  Her face does something complicated, as if she wants to be smug and deeply ashamed, both at the same time.  “The second time, he kissed me back,” she finishes.  After a moment, she reaches for the nail polish, again.

Steve takes another sip of his tea.  “He’s good at that, isn’t he?” he says mildly.

She nods quickly - too quickly, she hates responding that openly - and he gives her moment to collect herself.  He deliberately does _not_ spend the moment thinking about Bucky’s kisses, instead distracting himself by wondering what point in Nat’s training this was.  It couldn’t have been too early, because surely they wouldn’t have brought - he winces - the Winter Soldier out for mere novices, but it can’t have been too late because she wasn’t even an adult yet…

“After that, he remembered,” she continues eventually.  “I think…  Based on what I know now, of course…  That kissing was something that was part of the old him - part of Bucky.  And by bringing that back, I was waking something up that hadn’t been around for a long time.”  She finishes his right big toe, then moves on.  “So after that, I was ‘his girl’, and after we were done training, there was always… more.  He had a handler in the room, but that man just laughed when he saw it.  He didn’t care.”  Third toe done; she starts on the fourth.  “We even went on a couple missions together; training missions, but still.  He had a new handler for those; when this one noticed what I was doing, _he_ cared.”  She finishes the pinky-toe in silence, then sets his foot down.

He takes another drink of his tea, then sets the cup down.  “What happened?”

“Nothing beyond kisses, Rogers; don’t worry.”

“I _meant,_  when that handler saw you doing it.”  Steve would honestly prefer not to hear any of the physical details of their relationship.

“Ah.”  She crosses her arms and doesn’t say anything for a while, then unfolds her arms and sighs.  “They brought me into… a different room.  Not the training room.  They put me in - it was a tub, basically; the room used to be a bathroom, once upon a time.  They put me in the tub, and told him to shoot me.”  

Head jerk, and now Steve’s _certain_ that’s her version of a shrug.

“He refused, and they hurried him away.  The Director told me that if I ever tried anything like that again, he would shoot me himself.  And that I would never again do _anything,_ mission or otherwise, with the Soldier.”  

Steve nods thoughtfully, and reaches for her right foot.  “Well,” he says, “He was definitely wrong about that one, wasn’t he?”

Her eyes widen, and then crinkle at the corners as she recognizes the truth of it.

 

* * *

 

When he’s done with the next coat on her toes, he finishes his tea and slips back inside before she starts on his again.  He drops the foot-washing bowl in the dishwasher and grabs a couple Woodchucks and Tsingtaos out of the fridge.  As he starts to go back outside, though, he sees Wanda looking at him hopefully from the edge of the kitchen.  

“How old are you?” he asks automatically.

She raises an eyebrow.  “As of last week?  Old enough to contain the explosion from a ruptured gas-line that runs underneath a HYDRA base into the middle of Detroit.”

Steve shrugs...  “Good point.” ...and guesses.  “Bud Light?”

Wanda shudders.  “Trappist?”

Steve blinks, then grabs the Spencer blonde ale with his free hand.  (Wanda obligingly closes the refrigerator for him from across the room.)  “Didn’t know you drink beer,” he comments.

“My brother did more often, but I was known to keep him company.”  She gives him a look composed of side-eye and eyebrow quirks, which is _her_ equivalent of _Natasha’s_ equivalent of a smile.  “And I’m from Europe; I know about beer.”

Steve hits the back door with his back, and FRIDAY is kind enough to open it for him.  “So not Bud Light, then?”

Wanda wrinkles her nose in confusion.  “That’s supposed to be beer…?”

 

* * *

 

When Wanda gets outside, however, she takes one look at the nail polish and says, “I’ll be right back.”

“If you want us to do yours, wash your feet!” Steve calls after her as she dashes back inside.  He gets an irritated wave, and mentally shrugs.

Nat tips her chair back on two legs to watch Wanda go back into the HQ, then lets her chair fall back to the flagstones with a _crack!_

“While she’s gone,” Nat says, making eye contact again and with her voice very even, “There’s something else you should know.”

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up, and he pops the lid of Nat’s Woodchuck with an unnecessarily sharp twist of his wrist.  “Oh?”

Nat makes her sharpest smile.  “Pepper isn’t happy.”

Steve twists the top off the Tsingtao, too.  “Say more.”

Nat lifts one shoulder up and then lets it fall again.  “We’re friends,” she says.  “We talk - privately.”  

“So you can’t tell me.”  He opens the Spencer, too; why not.

“Not specifically,” she says cautiously, but that isn’t the same thing as locking him out.  “Do you know how we met?”

“You and Pepper?”  He thinks about it, but really, there’s only one answer it can be.  “Was it something about Tony?”

“Fury sent me to evaluate Tony for participation in the Avengers Initiative,” she confirms.  “This was immediately before he made her CEO of SI; I was promoted to being his personal assistant due in the wake of her advancement.”  She reaches for and sips from the Woodchuck.  “We bonded over cleaning up his messes.”

Steve watches her over the rim of his untouched beer.  “What am I missing about that summary?”  

She sips again, and doesn’t say anything, so apparently he’s supposed to work it out.  

“Fury sent you… undercover, right?  That’s why Tony didn’t like you, at first?”

“Well, part of the reason,” she says, tilting her head the side like a beauty contestant and smirking very faintly.

“And this was while he was dying from the palladium…” Steve says, but she doesn’t react to that, either.  “His messes were pretty substantial during that, weren’t they?”

No response.

“Wasn’t that when Rhodes got the suit?”

Swing and a miss, but that makes sense; if it was Rhodey getting the suit, she’d have shown interest at the messes.  

“How long ago was that, anyway?” he mutters, rubbing his forehead and scratching his left eyebrow with his dry hand - the other one is wet from the condensation on the bottles.  He’s mostly talking to himself, so he doesn’t expect Nat to look him dead in the eye and lift her chin, face blank.  

“Five years,” she tells him intensely, and he rocks back in surprise.  She tilts her head to the side, never breaking eye contact.  “Gosh,” she says, “That time sure was hard on my friend Pepper.”

Then Wanda comes back with a set of pens filled with nail polish, instead of ink, and Steve’s too busy drawing celtic knotwork on Natasha’s toes to continue what had, after all, been a private conversation.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, Vision.”  Steve smiles at the android, who is deep in discussion with Maria Hill and, from the sound of it, FRIDAY.  

“Captain Rogers.”  Vision inclines his head.

“Steve!”  Maria hitches herself up on the desk.  “Come to help plan what we do next?”

Steve raises his eyebrows and dips his head to the side.  “That’s not exactly why I was here, but I’m always happy to help.  What were you thinking of, though?”  He walks further into the room, finding his own patch of desk.  “I sorta thought we had squared away everyone who needed squaring, for the moment.”

“We did,” Maria says, sounding grim.  “But somehow, there always manages to be more.”

She passes him a stack of reports.  

“This is somewhat complicated,” she warns.  

“Well, that’s me out,” Steve says, widening his eyes and tossing the papers back on the desk.

“Ha, ha, Rogers; so funny I forgot to laugh.  I’m just telling you, it’s convoluted.”

He shrugs, looking curiously past her to Vision, who has been strangely quiet.  “So convolute me, then,” he orders.

It goes like this:

Most of HYDRA is gone; the remaining players are all in small groups, most of which they have eliminated.

While checking up on the groups they _haven’t_ eliminated, however, a faint trail began to unfold:  a theft in Toronto, a murder in Brazil, “terrorist” explosions in Cairo that have faint traces of gamma radiation…

Vision tells him the trail adds up to an individual player trying to come to prominence inside the mostly-defunct HYDRA.

“Cut off one head,” Maria says grimly, “And some _jackass_ will try to _fuck everything up.”_

Steve looks from her to Vision and back again, frowning.  “This isn’t convoluted,” he accuses.  “This seems pretty straightforward.  If someone’s trying to raise HYDRA, we knock him back down. What am I missing?”

There’s a second trail.

A mysterious heart attack, a series of promotions given to unusual candidates, nominees to positions that Senator Stern’s cronies refuse to confirm…

“You’re talking government corruption?”

“To be honest, we don’t know _what_ we’re looking at.  This doesn’t look like HYDRA, but it also isn’t the way things normally run…  and the general dysfunction of the government right now _doesn’t_ make anything clearer.”  She scowls and crosses her long legs.  “It’s impossible to tell how much is politicians being irrationally partisan, and how much is schemers being rational but devious. Still, _something’s_ going on.  And the timing's suspicious - why is this happening at the same time as everything else?”

Steve realizes he’s tense, and shakes out his shoulders.  “You think someone’s buying congressmen?”

“Someone is always buying congressmen,” Vision tells him dryly.  “I believe Mr. Stark has the aid of four.  Our concern in this case is that for once, the purchaser is… obscure.”

“Huh.”  Steve thinks about patterns of human behavior, about how far government authority can stretch… about _exactly_ how far men can go while telling themselves that they’re _just following orders._ He shivers.  “What else?” he asks Maria.

She grimaces.

“I have some… informants,” she starts.

“Maria…”

“I’m not revealing their identities unless forced, and it’s not because I don’t trust you,” she tells him with her usual directness.  “It’s because even this place could be bugged, and they’re all former SHIELD agents.”

She says SHIELD, and Steve hears HYDRA.  “Do you trust them?”

“Yes,” she answers immediately.  “These were - they were the ones I _liked,_ Steve.”  She blinks, only once, but enough for Steve to remember.

The great thing about Maria Hill is that she’s married to her job.  She will always be available for the Avengers, not only because she cares about the work they do, but also because she doesn’t really have a life.  The downside of that, though, is that when SHIELD fell, she lost literally _all_ of her friends - either to betrayal, or to inability to keep contact without ruining their covers.  

So if she’s telling him that the information she’s about to give him comes from former SHIELD agents - the ones she _liked -_ what she’s saying is, it comes from her _friends._ Honestly, Steve’s just glad she still has some.

He smiles at her.  “All right,” he says warmly.  “So what do your friends have?”

“Dribbles,” she warns.  “It’s not much, not from any of them.  But added to the rest…”  She tilts her head to the side.  “Someone’s trying something - some sort of global power play.  International in scope, which makes it something that should at least be on the Avenger’s radar.  Whoever it is, they’re subtle, and very smart.  The only reason we were even able to put it together as much as we have, is that, well…”  

She gestures to Vision, and then to the ceiling.

“Ah.”  Steve picks up the stack of papers, shuffling through it.  

“My concern is that a lot of what needs to happen to deal with these threads, especially the last two, is…  It’s pretty morally dubious,” Maria explains.  “Infiltration of multiple governments is not exactly a good-guy move.”

Steve turns a page in the notes - and they _are_ notes, too diffuse to be a proper briefing.

“I must caution against such a course,” Vision puts in.  “Should the Avengers begin acting in the political arena, we will near-instantaneously become targets of global wrath.  It is imperative that the Avengers, _as_ Avengers, avoid political agency.”

“Not really possible,” Steve says, scanning the page in front of him.  “Stock reports?  Really, Maria?”

“The economy is one of the primary forces in the world,” she tells him seriously.  “We have a whole subroutine dedicated to tracking trends in the stock market.  Also, flip to the next page.”

He flips; the next page shows many of the same stock reports as the previous, but this time overlaid on a timeline together with a series of unexplained events.  Red, green, blue, and orange lines track changes in subsets, showing a dip in either the blue or orange after every incident noted on the paper.  “Well, that’s disturbing,” he agrees.  Blue is tech stocks; orange is marketing.  “What does it mean?”

“Unfortunately, so far the mysterious player has failed to show their hand,” Vision says in his droll way.

Maria nods, jouncing her leg.  “So far, he’s not raising himself up, just tearing everyone else down,” she agrees glumly.

Steve flips back to the previous few pages.  “Pretty even-handed, whoever he is,” he comments.  “Look, it’s us - America, I mean - but also Russia, Germany, China - I bet if you made a list of the twenty most powerful world players, all of them will be on the list of folks being undermined.”

“They were,” Vision says dryly, and Steve grins.  

He tosses the packet on the desk.  “Actually, this coincides with something I wanted to talk to you about, anyway,” he says.  “I agree with you both - it’s best to keep the Avengers apolitical if possible, and clandestinely infiltrating governments is definitely over the moral line.”  He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees.  “But what if we weren’t _clandestine_ about it…?”

 

* * *

 

“Oh, _what_ is _that?”_  Clint’s voice is indignant and tragic.

“Well, we started with the blue, but then Wanda came back with these pen-things -”

“Don’t talk to me about those, my daughter is going _crazy_ trying to get some -”

“- but Wanda only had red, purple, and black, so we kind of had to improvise.”  Steve considers the artwork on his feet.  “I think it’s handsome,” he says, primly wiggling his toes.

“Steve,” Clint stares.  “You have _fish scales_ on your _toes.”_

Steve beams at him.  “The girls did a great job,” he says earnestly.

Clint makes an outraged pirate noise (“Yaaarrrrgh!”) and stomps away.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am *so excited* for next chapter! It'll post on Friday, by the way - it's all drafted up. 
> 
> Also, Spite and Malice is a real game. My sister and I were taught by my grandmother and her friend Alice, who were just about the right age to be in Steve and Bucky's generation - my grandmother was an officer in WWII - so I figured the boys would know.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: Major thanks to Valmasy for beta-reading this! Any mistakes are mine.

 

Possibly reeling from the trouncing the Avengers have just given HYDRA, the population of villains is strangely quiet for the rest of the month:  no terrorist attacks that aren’t explainable by standard politics, no explosions in remote locations that look suspiciously like labs, no kidnappings.  

(Steve has quietly suggested that, if they are looking for projects to pursue when the world is quiet, Maria might benefit from looking for Dr. Banner.  To his surprise, Hill takes him up on it.  He suspects this has more to do with staving off boredom than with any desperation to find Bruce.  He doesn’t call her on it, though, because he doesn’t want her to stop - Bruce was a good friend, and Steve hates the thought of him off all alone in the world.)

So after hashing out the details of their next phase with Maria, Steve has a lot of free time to spend at Avengers Tower.  

 

* * *

 

Back in Manhattan again, Steve takes a deep breath and leans in the doorway.  

Inside the room, Tony and Pepper - who are expecting him, which Steve knows because he asked FRIDAY to double-check for him - are setting food out on plates from the pile of take-out containers by the sink.  Pepper is disposing of the empty cardboard boxes in the hydraulic trash can, but it’s not a kitchen that looks cooked-in, and Steve thinks he wouldn’t be fooled even if he had been running late.  

“- and I appreciate it, Tony.  I know how hard you’re working - I _have_ known, for years.  It’s not - you cover it up around so much of the world, you make it look effortless, but I can see your schedule, Tony, I know what’s going on.  That’s not it.”

“Well, what _is_ ‘it’, then?  Because you just admitted there’s something, that is - that is a thing you have now done, Pepper -”

“I love you, Tony -”

“So what, exactly is the problem, here?”

“- I have loved you for _years -”_

“Because there is a problem, right?”

“Don’t be like that.”

“Be like what?  I’m just saying -”

He can’t just stay in the door during this.  Steve stands up straight and edges further into the room.  “Am I interrupting?”

They both look up at him, “caught” expressions flittering over both of their faces.  

“Yes,” Tony says, and Steve smiles because at least it’s honest.

“No,” Pepper says firmly.  “Come in, Steve.  I hope you like Thai?”

Steve hesitates, but behind Pepper’s back Tony gives a resigned nod.  Mentally shrugging, Steve advances the last of the way into the kitchen.  “I do like Thai, actually,” Steve says.  “Can I help carry plates?”

But he remembers, as he sets the plates on the table, the conversation with Natasha. _“Gosh, that time sure was hard on my friend Pepper.”_

This might become a problem.

 

* * *

 

The tea house is all the way out in Westchester, but the drive isn’t bad on the bike.  

“Goodness, Steve, I didn’t even know this was here,” Pepper greets him, and he smiles and pulls her chair out for her.

“I got a recommendation from a friend,” he says, “I’m not normally a big fan of tea.  It sounded like your kind of place, though.”

Pepper smiles graciously up at him.  “Well, your friend has good taste,” she says, and Steve realizes she thinks he asked Tony.  She takes over pouring and sets him out a small plate of cookies.  It’s a combination of mothering and courting behavior usually displayed between the wife and kept Omega of a common Alpha, Steve realizes, and then feels foolish for not having seen it sooner.  “I like the haircut,” she comments, spooning sugar into her tea.

“Thank you,” Steve says, watching her spoon move.  “I was told to go more old-fashioned with it; I thought it might be good to remind folks a bit of the way things used to be.”

She smiles tightly.  “I’m sure that never hurts.”  She adds a last spoonful of sugar, for a total of six; Steve suspects she doesn’t actually like tea.

He tries to think of something to say, he really does.  It’s just _hard._  He’s never had a great rapport with Pepper, despite respecting her enormously, because she’s reserved enough that he never really feels comfortable.  If he had spent more time with her, that might not be a problem - he learned to read Natasha’s silences easily enough - but as it is, well…  She’s a stranger.  An _intimidating_ stranger.

 _And she doesn’t like me, now,_ he realizes sadly.  

It’s not Steve’s fault she had been expecting things to work out differently, and not particularly hers, either; they both want the best for Tony, they just have diametrically opposed views of what that means.  For his part, Steve refuses to be Tony’s Omega, because he _isn’t an Omega;_ likewise, Steve isn’t going to interact with _Pepper_ as if he were one, either.   _After all, if I’d been any good at that,_ he thinks, _Bucky coulda kept me before he left for the war._

It was just never going to happen.

And Steve’s not going to encourage Tony’s retirement from Avenging, either.  That’s probably the part that’s ticking Pepper off the most, overall.  She wants Tony _safe_ \- Steve can’t really blame her - and she thinks that the key to getting that is for him to put Iron Man away for good.  

 _But Tony’s said a dozen times that_ he is _Iron Man,_ Steve thinks rebelliously.   _You can’t just shelve_ who you are.

Steve has a memory-flash of an abandoned dancehall, and shudders.

“So what’s new at SI?” he asks, an opening gambit to allow her to get as general (public-knowledge releases), or as personal (her own hopes and dreams for the company), as she wants.  

She tells him about the office gossip in HR, instead, and redirects the conversation to art.  

 

* * *

 

Darcy Lewis is a beautiful young man, the sort of Omega that would never have to work a day in his life if he didn’t want to: sharp, lush features, dreamy blue eyes, and a roundly muscular form make him physically attractive, and the domestic habits he clearly cultivates (hand-knit fingerless gloves, the smell of fresh-baked cookies in his office, a wreath of silk flowers arranged around a sampler on the wall), combined with a prosaic and accepting attitude, make him relaxing and restful to be around.

Steve is a little ashamed that his first reaction to the Omega is to wonder if Pepper ever sent _Darcy_ to Tony.

If so, Tony must have been having a bad day, though, because Darcy is insightful and quick to action, and Steve’s pretty sure that he and Tony would get along like gangbusters.

Darcy’s office is small - Steve has seen larger cubicles - and crammed with furniture:  a set of shelves holding, yes, books, but also phone chargers, a coffee machine, and a basket of what appear to be arts and crafts supplies; an overstuffed armchair which Steve is astonished to realize is a recliner, albeit one with no room to recline; and a desk littered with napkins and abandoned coffee mugs, with the flat screen computer turned to face towards the room.  There’s no chair on the other side of the desk, and Darcy urges Steve to plop down in the recliner, choosing to drop himself onto the arm rather than pull out one of the folding chairs tucked behind the door.  

“Make yourself comfortable,” he says, pushing on Steve’s chest until he sits rather than continue being groped.  The words have a faintly country accent.  “Here - coffee.  Nectar of the gods.”  Darcy’s smile is wide and very pink, and Steve realizes with a jolt that he wears lip gloss.  There are plenty of Omegas who _do,_ of course, it’s just that Steve… really hasn’t encountered any in professional settings.

“Pepper said you were the best,” Steve starts hesitantly.

Darcy beams.  “Tony’s a sweetie,” he declares fondly....

_Well, that answers that…_

“...It’s a shame I don’t really like the city, I’d love to work with him full-time,” Darcy continues.  “What a challenge, right?”

Steve nods, vaguely, wondering what he’s agreeing to.

“But they make me claustrophobic,” Darcy continues, “Although there’s something to be said for steady access to Starbucks.”  He shrugs it off.  “Anyway, I came home to Virginia, and now most of my clients are, like, two-generations-removed political kids, like Chelsea Clinton only for senators, not presidents, you know?”

Steve nods vaguely again.

“I would definitely have to drop a couple if I’m taking you on - which is cool, Bertie Stern is an asshole _anyway,_ honestly, it’d be good to get rid of him; I’d’ve done it already, but, like, _student loans,_ y’know? - but yeah, I would totally love to do this.  Here, have a cookie - oatmeal raisin, I made them myself.”

Steve takes a cookie.  Darcy beams.

It’s a pretty good cookie, honestly.

“Good job on the haircut,” Darcy continues, pulling up a tablet from the detritus on the desk and settling himself alarmingly close on the arm of the recliner, “It’s exactly the note you want to strike.”

“Thank you,” Steve says.  When Darcy had sent him the email setting up the time for this meeting, he’d also instructed Steve to “grow your hair out; you want to look presidential, not boybandish.”  Then he’d included pictures, helpfully labelled in green and red:  “Do [THIS](http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/marvelmovies/images/a/af/Steve_Rogers.jpg/revision/latest/top-crop/width/240/height/240?cb=20101102092737), not [THAT](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1843866/mediaviewer/rm1052297984).”

Steve gets the impression that Darcy might be used to dumbing things down for people.

“I’ll get you some product for it,” Darcy continues blandly, “just to give it a little more volume, but honestly, it’s pretty close to perfect.”

“I don’t use product -” Steve starts.

“Believe me, I can tell.”

“- because the smells always get to me,” he finishes.  “I have a pretty sensitive nose.”  He shrugs apologetically at Darcy, who blinks.  

“Got it.  I’ll send out some emails, see what I can find for you.”

Apparently, supersoldier noses are not enough to get him out of styling cream.

“I’m getting a little ahead of myself here, though,” Darcy continues.  “Talk to me about goals for this.  Why are you finally getting a PR manager after all this time?  You never had one before.”  His dark hair - thick and, Steve suspects, curly, cut into a flatteringly metrosexual style around his face - releases the scent of green apples and sandalwood as it shifts with the tilt of his head.  

“That’s not exactly true,” Steve begins hesitantly.  “SHIELD handled it until, uh…”

“Last year,” Darcy nods.

“...and over the last year, well, the Avengers have plenty of support staff.  It turns out that a couple of them have been handling my fan mail, and I’ve been too busy to really do ‘public appearances.’  But now things have calmed down…”

“You’re left in limbo.”  Darcy seems to instinctively understand the need to keep busy, and Steve wonders at it, a little, coming from this beautiful Omega who, in all honesty, probably doesn't _really_ have to work a day in his life...

...but the room around Steve is practically strewn with busywork, and Darcy is incredibly young to be one of the best in the business.

“Right.”  Steve edges subtly away from him on the recliner before his body can react in some inappropriate way.  “As to goals…”  He hesitates, and his own hair flops to the side as he side-eyes Darcy.  “Pepper said you had clearance…?”

“Yes?  I mean, the Avengers are their own thing now, right, so I don’t know what y’all’s standards for that are.  But I know Thor?  And Janey - I mean, Jane Foster?  And I used to hack up to clearance level four at SHIELD on the regular, because the one time I didn’t, Thor showed up pounding aliens in New York and didn’t even stop by for a visit, and I promised Janey that I’d try to keep _that_ from happening again, so.”  He shrugs.  

Steve blinks.  Mentally, he tosses the way Thor relates to “Midgard” into the air, and when it lands, it settles into a much more sensible configuration.  “Right,” Steve says, shaking it off.  “So here’s what we’ve got so far…”

 

* * *

 

Two weeks later, Steve goes from curled up with Bucky to dropping out over Panama in the space of a few hours, and frankly, he doesn’t enjoy it one bit.

Part of the problem is the pheromones.  The chemicals Omegas in heat give off produces a sleepy-horny effect that makes Alphas feel like a Sunday morning, and it’s almost impossible to shake it off enough to fight.  That effect is actually _why_ Omegas exist, as Steve understands it:  in prior evolutionary stages, Alphas would fight each other to the death, eliminating valuable members of the… pack?  Tribe?  Clan?  Whatever the word was, the group needed those Alphas - generally, effective fighters and hunters - and infighting was, collectively, damaging to the human race.  So a group of individuals capable of emitting a “peace out” drug had been essential to human development.

It makes it damned hard to leave an Omega in heat and dive headfirst into a mission.

There’s more to it than that, though.  That first time, Bucky said - mentioned, actually, in an offhand manner that frankly terrified Steve - that he’d had some physical damage from the heat.  This time, Steve won’t be around to check up on him.

He _worries,_ alright?

And then there’s the brainwashing.  Bucky reported no change in his condition after the last heat, and he doesn’t seem any different as of the last time Steve’s seen him with this heat, either.  That, in turn, makes Steve worry that this is as good as it’s going to get.

If Bucky is going to be _only this recovered_ for the rest of his _life,_ Steve doesn’t feel very good about keeping him locked in Tony’s tower.

Steve slams one of the terrorists across the floor hard enough that he skids into a nearby Jeep, and stalks across the cracked, graying pavement.  “Last of the life signs is two hundred yards to your ten,” Rhodey says in his ear.  “You want me to get him?”

Steve starts to run, breathing out through his mouth and in through his nose, smelling cordite and blood and rage.  “Nah,” he says, “I got ‘im.”

 _Bucky’s not going to spend the rest of his life locked away,_ Steve promises himself as he cuffs the last terrorist none-too-gently.   _If that means doing some things differently, then that’s what I’ll damned well do._

 

* * *

 

When they get back, Steve splits the team.  

Wanda, Viz, and Nat, along with Rhodey and Clint as available, stay at the Upstate HQ, forming the core of the Avengers.  They’re the tactical and response team, the ones who do the majority of the missions, the ones who _plan_ the majority of the missions...  If something goes wrong in the world, they’re the ones who will go in first.  The rest of the Avengers - Steve, Sam, and Tony - are at Avengers Tower, and they’re “on call” for emergencies too big to handle without them, should one occur.  

While all three of the Avengers living in the tower are still… well, _Avengers…_ Steve _did_ pull them out for a reason.  Each one of them has a second set of duties to which he attends.

 

* * *

 

Tony works on tech upgrades for Stark Industries and launching his new September Foundation.  He also, although he refuses to make a big deal about it, has been designing upgraded tech, protective gear, and weapons for the Avengers.  At Steve’s urging, he continually upgrades the Iron Man suits, as well.  (It didn’t take much persuading, to be honest.  And Steve’s insistence has as much to do with Tony’s love for the armor as it does with Tony’s safety.)  

All that does, of course, take up a lot of Tony’s time, but astonishingly, Tony _still_ has more free-time than he used to.  It’s a testament to how essential - and underappreciated  - Tony was for the Avengers.

 

* * *

 

Steve dives head-first into the project he’s working on with Darcy.  At Maria’s urging, he claims in an interview with _Time_ to have stepped back from hands-on leadership of the Avengers, emphasizing his increasing interest in disaster rebuilding.  That, in turn, requires enormous amounts of research: there’s an entire science to disaster relief, now, which Steve finds both hopeful and alarming.  He sends an appeal to the UN that the Avengers be notified when clean-up crews are required, has lunch with the deputy administrator of FEMA (“You can have it,” the man says disgustedly, mopily picking at his french fries), and spends a week on the ground in Sokovia.  

(For the next few months, a meme circulates on the internet showing a refugee, dirty and with everything he owns in a pack on his back, philosophical expression on his face.  The text is the font called Impact, and it reads, _Well, at least I got to meet Captain America.)_

He also updates the _Marisa Knoll: Skinkret Agent_ project.  Again at Maria’s urging, he indulges in a drawing tablet, works up a buffer of unpublished comics, and spends time “in character” bonding with the regular readers.  

They make him a Wiki; it’s rather sweet.

One of them, username BaronessOfNYMH, asks about the paintings in the cafe on five, and amid a sense of deep surreality, “Eva” (Steve’s pseudonym) claims that she was commissioned to do animal portraits of the Avengers.  The fans promptly _lose their minds,_ and Steve spends an afternoon alternately trying to breathe without wheezing and painting a vibrant, chaotic carnival to work out his panic.

But while all of this is _mentally_ exhausting, Steve finds himself jittery with excess energy.  There’s only so much time you can spend running, working out, training, and fighting.  Tony throws himself gleefully onto the grenade of Steve’s inability to become physically exhausted, but even that fails to take the edge off (although they have a wonderful time trying).  

 

* * *

 

Steve drafts Sam to help him with Operation: Try Not To Look Like Jerks.  Specifically, he drafts Sam to do all the things Steve _can’t_ do because Steve is highly visible.  “Not that no one knows what the Falcon looks like,” Steve explains, “But I’m pretty sure, even today, a black man is less likely to be recognized as a superhero than a blond, white one.”  

Sam barks out a crackling, bitter laugh.  “You’re right about that,” he says darkly.  

So while Steve is meeting with congressional committees and journalists, Sam gets to make meet-ups with informants and perform infiltrations, as needed.  He works with Maria and Clint to get an ear in with the biggest black market vendors, and has an enormous amount of fun working with the FBI to offer a certain high-ranking public official the bribe which leads to his arrest.

Mostly, though, Sam works with Bucky.

 

* * *

 

“Man, I am _not_ sure about this.”

“Sam, there’s nothing to be nervous about.”  If it weren’t the third time they were having this conversation, Steve might not be so annoyed.  As it _is_ the third time, and they’re in the elevator on the way up right now, to boot, Steve is pretty much done with it.  “Honestly, most of the time I go see him, we just play _cards._ You can’t be nervous about talking to a guy who plays _cards_ all the time.”

Sam is not fooled.  “I bet he cheats,” he snaps immediately.

“Hate to tell you this,” Steve says as the elevator doors open, “But so do I, pal.”

“I can confirm that, if you need me to, Mr. Wilson,” FRIDAY chirps.  

“No, I do not need you to do that, because I already knew it, _thank you,_ FRIDAY.”  Sam crosses his arms over his chest as he ambles out after Steve.  “Damn cheating supersoldier…s,” he mutters.  

It’s not a long hallway to Bucky’s door.  

“Man, he put you in a nursery?  What the hell is wrong with Stark?”

Bucky looks up from his books.  “I like it,” he comments, voice mild.  “Reminds me that there’s soft things in the world.”

Sam’s hands have been wrapped around his biceps, his posture tight and defensive; now, his fingers clench, making the fabric of his tan henley bunch around his biceps before he releases his arms to his sides and glares at Steve.  “If you’re smug about this,” Sam warns, “I will not speak to you for a month and a half.”

“I will not be smug,” Steve promises.

“You’re _lying.”_

“I will… try not to look smug where you can see it?”

Sam narrows his eyes.  “Better,” he says shortly, before turning back to Bucky.  “Alright, Barnes, we’ve met before, but we didn’t exactly do introductions.  I’m Sam Wilson, and before I started working with this asshole -” He indicates Steve. “- I was a counselor at the VA.”  

Bucky shakes his hand, looking curious.  

“I’m not even close to qualified for this, but it turns out that most psychologists who study enhanced individuals aren’t exactly working for the good guys, so I’m what you’ve got.  Steve tells me you’ve got some kind of code words you’re worried about…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I tell you how excited I am for Omega!Darcy? _I am so excited about Omega!Darcy!_
> 
> Okay, so when I designed this world, I had the population of women be about 20% of the total, right? So even with MCU's already-skewed demographics ("Hey, let's have one woman on our six-person Avengers team!"), I still needed to genderflip a few of the women. My first instinct, waaaay back when I was writing the first piece of this, was to flip Pepper, but I didn't, so we get the whole Stony development that depended on Steve not knowing Tony liked Alphas until now. (Try to tell me Pepper wouldn't be an Alpha. Go on. I'll be right here.)
> 
> Maria Hill was my second choice, once I really put some thought into it, but by that point I realized I'd already referred to her as a lady. So nope, probably not her. 
> 
> Darcy, though. Darcy! DARCY!!! Darcy makes a fucking AWESOME Omega. She's (Well, okay, He's) like, "Yeah, I'm an Omega! I'm a damned sexy one, too. I'm also incredibly competent in my chosen field. Bring it." 
> 
> Then I thought about this universe I'm building here, and I realized two things: 1. Darcy-as-Omega was way less likely to go into the STEM fields than Darcy-as-woman. So I had no hesitation plucking him out and having him apply his PoliSci degree towards public relations after London. And 2. If Jane is a lady (she is) and Darcy is an Omega (he is), then Darcy is absolutely, 100% Thor's Kept Omega in this verse. I don't know why it made me so happy to realize that, but it really, REALLY did. <3 God bless Darcy.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Valmasy for the edit; any remaining mistakes are mine.

 

Steve gets together with Sam later that afternoon to go over what he and Bucky discussed during their first meeting.

“Okay, hold up,” Sam says, holding his hands out with palms up in what Steve is embarrassed to admit he thinks of as _repulsor position._  “You need to know some things going in.”  He watches Steve carefully as he rounds the high counter in Steve’s kitchen, and Steve nods, eager for Sam to continue.

Sam shakes his head, instead.  

“The first thing you need to know,” he says, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the machine on Steve’s counter and dropping some multigrain slices into the toaster, “Is that this is a slow process.”

Steve nods eagerly again to show that he’s listening, and watches as Sam does not believe him, not even a little bit.

“I mean  _ really  _ slow, Steve.  For example, what Bucky and I went over today was just establishing that he’s willing to  _ try  _ to work on this with me, and that he’s willing for me to give you status updates.”

Steve blinks.  “That’s it?” he asks, surprised.  Sam and Bucky had been closeted together for close to three hours this afternoon; he would have thought they would get more accomplished...

Sam nods gravely, eyebrows raised pointedly.  “Yeah.  Exactly.  That’s what I mean.”

It’s pretty disappointing.  Steve can’t imagine how that conversation could have taken longer than fifteen minutes; what had they done with the remaining two and a half hours?  Steve opens his mouth to ask, but then hesitates.

“Good job; keep on thinking,” Sam advises, pulling his toast out of the toaster and reaching into Steve’s cabinet for the peanut butter.  He freezes.   _ “Jesus,  _ Steve.” 

“What?” Steve asks, hiding defensively behind his coffee mug.  “I like peanut butter.”

Sam blinks at the jars, three neat rows of four, with another column after that of three jars of the chocolate-flavored peanut butter, just because.  “You know what?  I’m not gonna touch this one.  You like peanut butter; good for you.”  Sam pulls down the jar from the far end of the row, the open one, and starts rifling through Steve’s drawers.

Steve ducks his head and glares at the counter-top.  “It was on special,” he mutters, trying to watch Sam without seeming like he’s looking.

_ It was on special,  _ Sam mouths to himself, mockingly, and Steve frowns.  Or actually, well…  _ pouts,  _ if he’s honest.

“So then,” Sam says, picking up his train of thought and dragging them both back on track, “while you’re thinking about why it might have taken three hours to decide whether I can tell you anything…”

Steve shifts awkwardly.

“... _ also  _ reflect on the fact that there are some things Bucky and I are gonna talk about that you won’t get reports on  _ at all.” _

Steve looks at Sam blankly.  “Like what?” he asks, confused.

Sam rolls his eyes, and Steve flushes as he spots the obvious problem with that question.

“Okay, but - make an analogy for me, here,” Steve begs.   _ Help me understand,  _ he means.

And Sam has always been pretty good at understanding where Steve is coming from, which is possibly why he nods and takes a deep breath, explaining patiently.  “Okay.  You know those scenes in medical dramas, where the doctor comes out and tells the family exactly what’s going on, including all the details of the diagnosis and the risks of possible treatments?”  Steve nods, thinking of an evening spent watching  _ Scrubs  _ with Clint because it was better than sleeping.  “That shit is  _ completely unethical  _ unless the patient has given the doctor permission to do it. __ Docs gotta put the patient first, and so do I.”

Steve frowns, and Sam tries again:  “I can’t counsel Bucky while being on  _ Team Steve -  _ the only way to counsel Bucky is to be on  _ Team Bucky.”   _

Steve lifts his coffee cup and doesn’t answer, thinking it over.

“Like, what if I told Bucky about your paintings?  Seriously, I’m asking right now - if the question comes up, can I take him down to five and show him the paintings?”

“I mean…”  Steve shrugs, awkward with it.  “If Tony ever lets him out of house arrest, I guess.”

"Even if it means he's gonna go down there and see how happy that crazy-ass mouse of yours is, and then he's gonna want to find you and punch you in your stupid, risk-taking head?"

Steve winces.  

Hesitates.

But nods anyway.  "Even then," he says.

“Okay!  So in order to discuss Bucky’s treatment with you, I need him to say something like what you just said about  _ every topic _ we discuss, including the parts of the topic that Bucky maybe hasn’t thought about for himself, yet.”

Steve nods, slowly, and takes another drink of coffee, shifting the thought around in his mind to get it to sit right.  “Because you’re on Team Bucky, now,” he parrots back.

Sam beams.  “Exactly,” he says.  

“But why can’t you just get blanket permission?” Steve asks impatiently.  He thinks about all the depictions he’s seen of counseling in the media people have shown him.  “Can’t you just say, ‘I’m reporting to Steve’, and he’ll know, and that’s the end of it?”

Sam stares at him, shaking his head slowly, stuffing peanut-butter-slathered toast into his mouth in a show of some strong emotion - bewilderment, frustration, or horror, Steve can’t exactly tell.

Steve sits back and hides behind his now-empty coffee mug, and tries to understand what Sam is saying.  But every way he turns it, he just doesn’t see how he can be so threatening to his best friend - how can it be such a big deal to just  _ talk  _ to him?!

Finally, Sam swallows his triangle of toast and swills from his own mug to get the peanut butter out of his mouth, then sets down his coffee cup and comes around the kitchen counter to sit next to Steve.  He braces his hands on the edge of a stool, swinging his legs up to prop on the strut underneath him, relaxed in that careful way he has which Steve so admires about him.

“Okay,” he says. “Try this.  Did SHIELD offer you a counselor?”  

“I mean…  Yes,” Steve admits, hunching his shoulders against the acidic wash of shame at the back of his throat.  His reaction hasn’t changed much since Fury - Fury himself! - made the offer. 

“But you didn’t take them up on it, right?” Sam asks, and Steve looks up with what he knows is a guilty expression, because no, he certainly hadn’t.  “Didn’t think so.  Why not?”

Steve is shaking his head back and forth, not so much because he’s disagreeing as because he doesn’t know where to  _ start.   _ “We didn’t - it wasn’t a - I’m not  _ crazy,  _ Sam!”

Sam’s eyes narrow, and he rears his head back.

_ “Not like that.   _ I just - I’d just woken up, and  _ before -” _

Sam crosses his arms.  

Steve sighs.

_“Look,_ Sam.  If I’d known  _ you  _ back then, it might’ve been different.  But I was coming from a place where seeing a… a  _ psychologist…  _ was pretty much an admission of insanity, and I wasn’t…”  He breaks off helplessly, realizing belatedly that his breath is coming faster and faster.

Sam’s eyebrows are practically taking off into  _ space. _

“I wasn’t really able to see a psychologist and just  _ accept  _ it,” Steve finishes lamely, and Sam unfolds his arms (possibly out of pity).

“Okay,” he admits, “that isn’t exactly what I was expecting you to say.”  He leans his elbows on the table and looks at Steve with a worried expression, thinks about saying something, and then backs off and says something else:  “If you were offered one today, would you go to a counselor?”

Steve gets up and refills his mug, mostly to buy time, then meets Sam’s gaze with raised eyebrows of his own.  “Why?” he asks, and winces internally at how tired his voice comes out. “Are you available?”

Sam is already shaking his head.  “No way, Steve; I already told you, I’m committed to Team Bucky.  But I bet Hill could find you someone if you wanted.”

Steve glares into his cup, his heart racing in his chest.  “Well I don’t want,” he says in a tone that dares Sam to ask further.  Then he holds his breath.

“Hokay,” Sam shrugs, and holds his hands up to echo the sentiment. “Whatever you say, Steve.”  He drops his hands back to his own coffee, adding, “It’s your call.  As it happens, what I was  _ expecting  _ you to say when I asked you ‘why not’ was that you didn’t take SHIELD up on their offer of counseling because you figured whoever they gave you would be reporting to Fury.”

Steve’s eyes go wide with horror as he imagines the possibilities.

With his luck, whoever they assigned him would probably have been working for HYDRA.

“Yeah, exactly.  So now you know why I’m not going to be reporting  _ anything Barnes says  _ to  _ anyone else, including you,  _ without Barnes  _ explicitly  _ telling me it’s okay for me to do so!”

Steve’s shoulders hunch, and he finds himself nodding, chastened.

Sam watches him for a minute, then sighs and hands him the last triangle of toast.

 

* * *

 

Steve really needs to stop watching Pepper and Tony together, because sooner or later it’s going to edge into the territory of the inappropriate.  

_ But not yet,  _ he thinks, edging closer to the railing of the balcony by the Starbucks which overlooks the lobby of Avengers Tower.  For some reason he can’t put his finger on, he finds it enormously satisfying to observe the two of them, especially when they don’t know he’s there.  

He leans his elbows on the railing and tilts his chair forward, stealthily watching Tony hold Pepper’s briefcase for her as she crosses the atrium.  It’s like drinking hot chocolate, he thinks, or like getting a hug from Nat.

There’s something warm and glowing under his sternum, and he finds his shoulders relaxing for the first time in days.

Below him, Pepper and Tony stop in front of the elevator, and Pepper takes his chin in her hand; Tony looks up at her with a sharp little grin that Steve can barely see from across the lobby like this.  Pepper leans down - she is, just barely, taller than Tony, even without the heels - and presses a kiss into his cheek. 

Tony responds by dropping her briefcase and wrapping her into a hug.  His head tilts down, resting against her shoulder, and Steve can just make out the sweep of his lashes as he closes his eyes.  Pepper runs her fingers through Tony’s hair, and, Steve thinks, probably scratches her nails gently along his scalp.  She sighs, smiling slightly, and reaches down to pick up her briefcase, letting go of him just slowly enough for Steve to be able to see the reluctant line of her wrist; Tony steps back, ducking his head, a pleased expression on his face barely visible with his head turned down and away from Steve.  Pepper darts in to press one more kiss against his mouth before the elevator opens and she steps in.

Tony stands there for a moment, hands in his pockets, after she leaves.   Then he stiffens, looking up and over his shoulder, gaze wild until he makes eye contact with Steve.  He freezes, expression turning uncertain, and Steve’s heart squeezes tight in his chest for a minute.  He leans forward over his folded arms on the balcony railing and rests his chin on his hands so that Tony can easily read his pleased expression.

Tony looks down, then back up, and the sunlight coming in through the front windows catches on his face, now angled so that Steve can see it perfectly. 

He’s beaming.

 

* * *

 

Thirty-one hours later, Steve finally finds the time to pull Tony by the front of his Metallica shirt into the penthouse, licking and sucking at the side of his neck under the left ear.  Tony, in response, is babbling:  “Oh, Jesus, Steve, don’t stop - arrrgh, right there, that’s - oh shit!  I need you to - ah,  _ Jesus!” _

Steve, very deliberately, presses Tony up against the dining room table; Tony’s hands fall down to grip at the edge of the wood, and he whines, high in his throat.  “Steeeve!  Steve,  _ please!” _

“Shhh,” Steve says, pulling at Tony’s belt.  “It’s alright, I’ve got you.”  He sucks at Tony’s collarbone, low enough that he can go to town without worrying about the hickey showing.

“I need -” Tony starts, breaking off to pant.  One of his hands flexes on the table, flattening to release the edges and gripping in the air to return control to the extremity.  He brings it up to Steve’s hair, gripping firmly so that Steve’s breath hitches in his throat, and pulling so that Steve - reluctantly - raises his mouth from Tony’s skin.

_ “What?” _ Steve pants impatiently, working his hands into Tony’s too-tight denim. 

_ “Steve,”  _ Tony growls, sharp and demanding, and Steve feels goosebumps pop up all over his shoulders and arms as both he and his hindbrain come to attention.  “I want you to fuck me.”

“I’m  _ trying -”  _

“Not like that.  I mean -”  Tony shifts, resting his weight on the table and spreading his legs, and Steve suddenly realizes  _ exactly  _ what he means.

“Oh,” Steve breathes, pulling lightly against Tony’s grip in his hair, just enough that he feels it tug deliciously at his skull.  “Are you sure?  We’ll have to be careful.”

Tony snorts.  “I wasn’t planning on being  _ that  _ careful,” he answers darkly, and Steve shudders as a wave of heat rolls over him.

He feels his eyelids droop, wanting to close in desire, and forces them open again to study Tony’s face.  “The knot -  _ my  _ knot, especially - we’ll have to go pretty slow,” Steve says, his voice growly with arousal.  “Have to stretch you open, more and more, inch by inch…”

His hands are working at Tony’s pants again.

“Can’t do too much,” Tony cautions, breathy.  “I - it’s not going to take -” His gaze cuts away, and Steve pulls out of his grip to press another deep kiss to Tony’s mouth, pressing forward deep enough that Tony moans around his tongue.

“Gonna go fast?” Steve asks in a murmur, barely pulling his mouth back.

_ “Yes,”  _ Tony grates, then cries out as Steve gets a hand around him.   Steve jacks him once, twice, then pulls his hand away again and steps back.

Tony’s splayed out, legs akimbo on the table; his head is thrown back and his eyes squinched closed.  His shirt is rucked up, the neck stretched to show off the hickey on his shoulder; his jeans are peeled away from his hips, and his cock juts out, dark and proud against his stomach.

“Jesus,” Steve says, admiring the view.  Tony’s eyes open and his head pulls up again - looking at Steve.  “No, don’t move,” Steve says, distracted.  “Stay right there, just like that.”

Tony whines again, letting his head fall back, and Steve turns away to rifle through the cabinets and drawers, slamming the doors more and more quickly as he doesn’t find what he needs.  “Damnit!” he snarls, frustrated, then looks back over as Tony whimpers at him - pointedly.

_ And honestly, trust Tony Stark to find a way to whimper _ imperiously, Steve thinks fondly. __

It solves the problem, though, because looking back at him, Steve can see what he needs.  He walks back over to Tony, reaching down and removing the other man’s sneakers.  Hands quick, he pulls the laces out of the gym shoes, winding up with two lengths of what is essentially cotton rope.  He makes a few loops and tosses them around Tony, who keens when he realizes what Steve is going for.  Steve tightens the rope, keeping an eye on Tony’s face.  “What do you think?” he asks, voice rumbly and sharp with Brooklyn.  “Think it’ll keep you in check?”  He bites his lip, trying to judge pressures.  “It’s not too tight, is it?”

“You know I already own cock rings, right?” Tony asks.  He’s only pretending to be annoyed, though; Steve is more than familiar enough to spot the affection and lust under the impatience.  “We could have skipped the step where I pose like a pinup with my cock out.”

“Could have,” Steve agrees quickly, grinning.  “Didn’t.”

He mentally hesitates, but really, it’s gotten very easy to read Tony’s kinks…

Essentially, Tony likes to be treated like an Omega.  He  _ isn’t  _ one, of course - and Steve thinks that, if offered a magic potion that would change him back into an Omega, Tony would probably decline - but sexually, Tony has, apparently, not significantly changed his tastes since he was fifteen and getting locked into a Heat Shelter with James Rhodes standing guard outside the door.  Tony likes to be pushed around, likes to be dominated - not to a huge extent, but he’s happier when there’s an edge of that dynamic between them.  He likes to be on the receiving end of  _ whatever  _ they’re doing, and he likes it when his partner has the corresponding Alpha behaviors.

It’s not the same for Steve; the modern world has a word for what Steve is, and it’s  _ pan _ .  Steve likes everything - Alphas, Omegas, women, you name it - but Tony’s been pretty good about meeting Steve halfway.  (For example, he’s been happy to help Steve out in the wake of Bucky’s heats:  When Steve’s been acting Alpha-ish for the last umpteen hours and really wants someone to take care of him, Tony’s happy to step up.)

But that’s not what they’re doing right now.  Right now, they’re going to go upstairs and Steve is going to spend a couple of hours opening Tony up enough to take his knot - which swells to about half again his regular girth - without tissue damage, while Tony’s cock is tied up too tightly for him to come, and they’re going to do it because Tony explicitly requested  it.   _ Begged  _ for it, even.

So Steve only hesitates for a second before throwing Tony over his shoulder.

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Valmasy for betaing! Any remaining mistakes are all on me.

Steve still goes up to the Upstate HQ occasionally, mostly for social reasons.  Natasha likes to come down to the city when she wants to see Steve, and he actually sees Rhodey more often when he’s at the Tower than when he lived upstate, but Wanda, Maria, and Vision all appreciate it when Steve comes to visit them.  

He tries to bring presents when he comes, but it doesn’t always work out as intended.

 

* * *

 

Wanda is the easiest, because she’s young, and enjoys girlish pursuits that are easy to shop for: clothes, books, fine tea.  They discuss the latest training exercises, and brainstorm ways to change tactically, while Steve paints her toenails or she bakes small, traditional pastries.  Natasha smiles to see them; on a good day, she even joins them.

On the bad days - the most recent two weeks ago - they talk about Pietro.

> _“The others don’t like to discuss it.  They believe that his ghost will swipe spectral fingers down our necks if they do.”_
> 
> _“That’s one way of looking at it.”  Steve screwed the brush back into the polish jar.  “Another way might be that they don’t want to remind you of your grief.”_
> 
> _She snorted, cradling her teacup in her hands as if cold.  (It was a sunny day, but the wind swirled briskly around them from the north-west.)  “Do you believe that?”  Her voice was mild, but the doubt came through clearly, anyway._
> 
> _Steve tipped his head to the side.  “I don’t know the real reason,” he admitted.  “But I’d rather believe the kind explanation than the cowardly.”  He picked up the blood-red polish pen and switched feet.  “And I don’t think our friends are cruel.”_
> 
> _Wanda looked over her shoulder, faint embarrassment in the blink of her eyes._ “You _asked,” she pointed out._
> 
> _He had._
> 
> _“I know our team members have all had hard lives,” Steve said calmly, outlining a feather on her big toe, “But I think I’ve had a bit more experience with grief than they have.  For the most part, anyway.  I know that sometimes it’s good to know that our loved ones aren’t forgotten.”  He made small strokes to mark the barbs of the feather, tiny ones that required concentration._
> 
> _“You don’t think the Avengers carry griefs?”_
> 
> _“I didn’t say that.”_
> 
> _Steve took the time to choose his words carefully._
> 
> _Natasha was raised in the Red Room; Tony had hated - still hated - his father; Vision literally had never had a family; and Thor and Bruce were too gone to ask.  Sam had had Riley - and probably some others in along the way; pararescue was dangerous even without the wings - but Sam was in Manhattan, working with Bucky.  Clint must have known what it was like - after SHIELD fell, after Loki - but Clint had spent more time on the farm in the last six months than in the previous three years, and Steve wondered sometimes if guilt would have stayed his tongue, anyway.  The last of them, Rhodey, was, perhaps a bit surprisingly, the most private of the Avengers:  even Natasha was an open book by comparison, although not by her choice.  While Steve could believe that Rhodes did understand the sharp, recurrent bile of recent grief, Steve didn’t think he would bring it up.  Rhodey would believe that was disrespectful._
> 
> _“I think their griefs are older, though,” he finally said slowly.  “And more... spaced out.  They didn’t lose everything, all at once -”_
> 
> \- And then wake up seventy years in the future with everyone expecting them to be grateful. _Steve flicked his eyes up to Wanda’s face, then back down to his work, glad once again that Wanda was telekinetic, not telepathic._
> 
> _“And for the most part,” he continued, “Their losses occurred early.  They benefit from the anesthetic effects of childhood, although that’s a double-edged sword.”  He twitched his shoulders uncomfortably.  “It’s not a_ contest, _Wanda.  I just… I don’t know, I thought it might explain it, somewhat.”_
> 
> I didn’t want you to think they don’t care.
> 
> _He moved on to the next toe, which was getting swirls of purple and orange; Wanda sipped her tea, contemplative, and watched the birds rooting for nuts amid the fallen leaves._ It’s going to be too cold to do this outside, soon, _Steve thought, watching out of the corner of his eye as her hair lifted and blew in the breeze._

This time, Steve arrives with apple cider, which he mulls on the stove, and a hand-knit scarf from Darcy (who had been tickled to be asked).  Wanda laughs, wrapping the scarf around her throat and raising her eyebrows, and poses while Steve takes a picture.  It's not one of the bad days.

 

* * *

 

Maria’s a little harder, but Steve does eventually find a few key shows of friendship for her.  She likes sushi, and he tries to arrive around dinner time for her, so that he can pick it up at lunch and keep it cold on the drive up.  She also likes their shared work - in fact, she occasional feels self-conscious about _how much_ she loves her work, and is grateful to be reassured that there’s nothing wrong with it.  (There _isn’t_ anything wrong with it.  Her dedication is one of the things Steve most admires about her.)  Maria can discuss strategy for hours, and at the end of such conversations is more relaxed than most people are after ten hours with a masseuse.  

She also, much to Steve’s astonishment, enjoys talking religion.  

Nowadays, Steve has a nervous relationship with the Church.  Once securely Catholic, he was shaken by his experiences in the war, shaken far further by meeting Thor and Loki, by the politics of the Church in the modern age, and by the recent rapid changes to the service.  He often feels alienated by what the Church has become, and he finds himself simultaneously yearning to separate God from Church, even as he's convinced that such a thing would be heretical.

But he doesn’t talk about it with anyone, really; after all, none of his friends are religious, either.  Until Maria asked him about it, he had assumed that all of them were atheist, agnostic, or something similar.

Maria was raised Episcopal, and in spite of everything - and it’s a lot of _everything_  to be in spite of-she still believes, as Steve found out approximately six months before the fall of SHIELD.

> _They were working a mission together in Quebec City at the time, and struggling:  Steve’s French was continentally accented and rudimentary, Maria’s strongly American; none of their contacts were in place, and only half of their supports; and since they both bore themselves the same way cops did, many of the people they were attempting to interview - largely members of the local underworld - were reluctant to trust them.  They wound up calling off the mission, after a frustrating five days, at nine o’clock Christmas Eve._
> 
> _“Damn it,” Maria said, getting in on the driver’s side and slamming her car door._
> 
> _“I hate the nothing missions.  You feel like a failure, even though no one got hurt,” Steve muttered in agreement, blowing on his hands to warm them.  It wasn’t_ really _cold, but the city was right at that temperature just below freezing where the snow comes down and promptly turns to slush._
> 
> _His hands apparently didn’t care that it wasn’t really that cold, and were trembling and jerking, anyway._
> 
> _“Yet,” Maria said darkly.  “There’s no way we’re going to be home in time for Christmas; my brother might yet murder me.”_
> 
> _Steve smiled in spite of his frustration.  “You celebrate with family?”_
> 
> _“The whole two days,” she confirmed.  “I’m already late.  I was supposed to be there at noon today to help bake - not that I’m not shit at baking, but my sister-in-law does all the work and generously pretends if I bring the good bourbon - and then we all go to the midnight service together.”  She frowned out the windshield as they paused at a red light, wiper blades sweeping away snow, and Steve felt it like a stab in the gut._
> 
> _“I haven’t gone to mass at all this month,” he blurted.  “Barely gone this_ year, _I just…”_
> 
> _She looked over at him as the light changed.  “You’re Catholic?” she asked, and her voice was… something.  Not quite surprised, but almost:  as if someone had told her this, but she hadn’t believed them._
> 
> _“Well, I used to be, anyway,” Steve hedged.  “Or - I guess I could go back any time, I just…”_
> 
> _She watched him from the corner of her eye.  “Too different?”_
> 
> _“I s’pose.”  He holds his hands out to the heater vent, even though the car isn’t properly warmed up, yet.  “I feel like a stranger, now.”_
> 
> _“Hmm…”_
> 
> _They drove through the city, heading for the SHIELD-owned mission-base, a repurposed private residence - specifically, a pretty buttercup-colored house near the edge of the city.  About half a mile away, though, Maria pulled to the side of the road in a leisurely manner - she even used her indicators._
> 
> _“What is it?”_
> 
> _“I was just thinking…”  She slapped the steering wheel, a frustrated gesture from a normally buttoned-down woman.  “We’re not going to make it back in time for me to get to Michigan, anyway, right?  Do -”  She bit her lip, then forged ahead.  “Do you want to go to a service together tonight?”_
> 
> _Steve looked out at the snow, stunned by the warm flood of sheer_  relief _he felt_. “Yes,” _he said thickly, heartfelt, and she dialed for Control on her phone, updating SHIELD on the new itinerary._

Steve shows up this time with a book on Hildegard von Bingen, and they spend two hours talking about it while Maria waits for a check-in from Rhodes in the briefing room.

 

* * *

 

Vision is almost impossible to shop for, for the longest time.  He doesn’t like things.

Not “sorts of things” - _things in general._ Vision does not like to own objects; he does not like to acquire stuff, or paraphernalia.  Steve can’t even bring him things for his own self-care, like he does with the girls, because Vision _literally_ generates all his own clothes using his powers.  

When Steve does finally find a solution, naturally it comes on the heels of having opened the conversation up to something more personal about _himself._

> _“Why didn’t you like my paintings?” he asked one day, and Vision turned his head slowly towards Steve with a blank expression._
> 
> _After a long moment of silence, he spoke, voice erupting suddenly without any preceding hesitation:  “Oh,_ I _see.  Because I did not comment about the painting, instead choosing to retreat, you believe I disliked the work.”_
> 
> _Steve was nonplussed.  “Didn’t you?”_
> 
> _Vision inclined his head.  “In fact, I had no negative feelings about your paintings themselves.  Indeed, I only viewed the one you displayed in the kitchen, which was hardly a sufficient sample to use when drawing conclusions.”_
> 
> _Steve... waited._
> 
> _“I… I departed without comment because I found myself drawing conclusions regardless of the… appropriateness of my reaction.”_
> 
> _Steve narrowed his eyes, and continued to wait._
> 
> _“In fact, Captain, the painting you displayed filled me with a sense of joy, a reservationless hunger for adventure most reminiscent of certain children’s cartoons.  I departed, not because of any disapproval for your work, but due to a rising sense of alarm at my own reaction.”_
> 
> _Steve’s fingers were biting into his biceps where his arms were folded over one another._
> 
> _“Wasn’t the painting I showed here the me-painting?” Steve asked.  “The one with the mouse riding the wild turkey, I mean?”_
> 
> _Vision nodded again, more easily, now.  “In fact, Captain, I believe it depicted a cavalry charge, of sorts.”_
> 
> _Steve sighed heavily, running a hand through his hair.  “Viz, that painting is_ supposed _to feel like that.  It’s supposed to make you feel happy, and brave, and new - a little scared, but daring.”  Because it was about how Steve had felt after stepping out of the Vita-Ray machine: not fenced in for the first time in his life._
> 
> _“I understand that, Captain, and the knowledge has been something of a comfort to me,” Vision agreed.  “But_ why _does it inspire such feelings?”_
> 
> _Vision wanted to know how feelings worked; more than that, he wanted to_ understand.

Steve shows up at the compound this time with a new painting, one which is, ostensibly, of clouds, lit from below by a dark, bird-like shape which shoots a wave of blue across the skyscape.  Vision stares at it in silence until the tears spill over.  

He wipes them away with a look of wonder for the wetness glistening on his fingers.

 

* * *

 

And then there’s the other thing Steve spends a lot of time doing:  For the first time since changing the uniform to pants instead of tights, he's spending a significant time talking to the media.

> **Steve Rogers:**  Are you sure this isn’t going to hurt anything else we’re doing?
> 
> **Darcy Lewis:** Yup!    
>  **Darcy Lewis:** You’re not in uniform, you’re speaking as yourself, and you’re generating good will by doing it.
> 
> **Darcy Lewis:** Besides.  
>  **Darcy Lewis:**  Too late to back out now!    
>  **Darcy Lewis:** Good luck! 

_Thanks,_ Steve thinks with a mental eye-roll, waiting behind the divider that hides him from the rest of the studio.  He turns off his cell phone - it’ll ring if aliens invade New York again, but other than that it’ll be silent.  He takes a deep, bracing breath, and waits.

On the soundstage, the British man clasps his hands together in a parody of concern.  “This is a very serious issue,” he intones. “And we understand that scientific evidence is less compelling than personal anecdotes, even though scientific evidence has been rigorously tested and peer-reviewed and fact-checked, while anecdotal evidence has a strong history of being bullshit, _so -!”_

He pauses as the crowd laughs and claps its approval.

Steve really hates doing interviews.  Even ones for good causes.

 _Even for_ this  _cause..._

“- So, tonight, we brought someone here who _has_ had personal experience with Scarlet Fever, Whooping Cough, and Measles.  And, just in case someone wanted to accuse _us_ of bullshit - not that any anti-vaxxer would every display hypocritical levels of skepticism while cherry-picking their sources, _of course they wouldn’t_ \- but just in case, we got someone who has a pretty firm reputation for telling the truth.  In fact, he’s got a pretty firm _lots_ of things -”  John Oliver stands up.  “- Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Captain Steve Rogers!”

Steve steps into the spotlights, and the crowd goes crazy again.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta by Valmasy; any remaining mistakes are mine.

There is one other person whom Steve visits regularly.

 

* * *

 

“Go on in, Captain; it’s a good day, today.”  

The nurse is tall and lithe, with tragic, thick-lashed eyes and a wrist-thick black braid coiled into a bun at the back of his head.  There’s a very handsome, rather pricey collar at his throat, and Steve finds himself flushing and avoiding the other man’s eyes:  Ninety-five years old, and Steve _still_ hasn’t learned how to talk to a gorgeous Omega.  

“Thank you,” he mutters, and brushes past, only to come to a halt at the entrance to the room.

It always gets to Steve, the amount of _clutter_ the room has.  There are several pictures on the bedside table and boxes by the door; there’s one chair by the bed, but also three more pressed against the far wall, not out of the way because there _isn’t_ an out of the way in the small hospice room.  

(The facility does not call itself a hospice.  It calls itself a _Senior Care Facility,_ and it claims to be _especially considerate of those seniors with security concerns,_ but in actuality it’s the SHIELD Hospice, and it’s one of the only parts of SHIELD untouched by the HYDRA revelation.  Partially, Steve suspects, this is because there are HYDRA members aging away alongside the SHIELD agents in the hospice; mostly, though, he thinks that HYDRA was probably just waiting until the high-priority targets had all been eliminated before they came through here.)  

Steps soft and slow - he never likes to startle her - Steve paces into the room.  

She’s asleep, right now.

Sometimes, Steve thinks - he has a lot of time to think, on these visits - that the sleep is the easiest part.  He knows that time is running out - he knows that every minute asleep is another minute with Peggy that he’s not going to get back - but…

When she’s asleep, Peggy isn’t confused.  When she’s asleep, she doesn’t think he’s an assassin come to kill her.  (She tried to defend herself, of course.  The photo frame had cracked when it hit him, and he’d made sure to get it replaced.)  When she’s asleep, she isn’t fretting about warning him: about Bucky, about HYDRA, about all the things he already knows.  

When she’s asleep, she’s not in pain.  

And when she’s asleep…  

Well.  

Steve still _hurts -_ of course he does - but he hurts _less._

It’s something, anyway.

So all things considered, coming here and finding her asleep…  The beautiful nurse was right:  it’s a good day.

 

* * *

 

He holds her hand, and sometimes, he thinks about the irony.  

Once upon a time, a young man managed to finagle his way into a boot camp, and holding hands was as far as he’d ever got with a woman.  And then Peggy Carter came out of nowhere, blindsiding him - literally, the right one was the bad eye - and he realized that he _wanted._ Wanted that strength beside him, urging him to do his best; wanted that cleverness behind him, steering him where he needed to go; and, more shamefully, wanted her softness atop him in ways that a neutral Beta from Brooklyn _really wasn’t allowed_ to want a beautiful women with an accent that could make angels shuffle their feet.  

He’d been kissed before Peggy; he’d even been able to get an Omega or two to come home with them, as long as Bucky was beside him.  And then there was Bucky himself, who for some reason had never seen what everybody else had seen when they looked at Steve, who instead saw something spirited and brilliant that thinking about it made Steve squirm something awful.  (Steve never figured it out, still hasn’t to this day, and he still gets restless when he tries.)

But a dame like _Peggy?_

No way.

Holding _her_ hand would have been frankly _ambitious._

Nowadays, of course, most people would say the opposite.  Steve’s not being arrogant:  he told people at SHIELD, on a couple of occasions, where he’d been going, and both times the reaction was, “Why?”  

_Peggy was old,_ the one said, eyes incredulous.   _You're allowed to move on to a woman who's a little more appropriate._

_Who exactly is more appropriate than the only person alive who knew me and liked me before the serum?_ Steve hadn’t asked.

_Doesn’t she have Alzheimer’s?,_ asked the other - an Alpha on his STRIKE team, Agent Handler.  Why would Steve want to spend his time with someone who couldn’t even remember whether or not he’d been there?

_Why would you think I’m so disloyal that I’d forget the only person alive who was always there for me?,_ Steve hadn’t asked the man, and a couple months later, he’d gotten his answer when Handler was revealed to be HYDRA.

Disloyal, indeed.

Nowadays, it’s Sam who urges Steve not to come.  Sam’s reasons, at least, are obvious:  he thinks it hurts Steve to see her like this.  And, hell, he’s right, really: it aches like the long-ago broken bone in his leg that the serum fixed in the forties, but which, even still, hurts in bad weather.  But the thing is, it’d hurt worse _not_ to come.  

So once every month or so - not regularly, but it works out to once a month - Steve comes up and sits by Peggy’s bedside.  

Sometimes they talk.  Usually, if they do talk, she winds up working through one of his problems with him; that’s just the way it is.

Sometimes, they kiss, instead.  

It shocked him, the first time it happened.  Peggy had woken up, greeted him ecstatically, and immediately tilted her face up to him expectantly before noticing her circumstances - her age, her frailty...  When she did notice, her face had crumbled, the realization of the intervening years hitting her like a blow, and Steve had leaned in, pressing his lips to hers in an effort to stop that look from advancing any further than it already had.  When he’d pulled back, she’d laughed, a bitter, shocked thing, and then leaned in, again, and, well, it wasn’t like Steve wasn’t going to kiss her back.  Wasn’t like he’d ever fallen out of love.  So he’d kissed her back, and sometimes he still does, although he’s always careful to keep his hands gentle around her fragile shoulders, and he only ever follows whatever lead she sets.  

And sometimes, like now, she’s asleep, instead.  When that happens, he just sits there, and holds her hand.

It’s enough.

 

* * *

 

Later that day, she wakes up, and they talk about Bucky, about Steve’s frustration with how slow the therapy process is.  

Peggy rolls her eyes at him.  “Not all of us make our transformations quickly enough to black out the whole city, dear.”  

Steve flushes, but grins.

The orderly was right:  This really is a good day.

 

* * *

> **  
> Text from Darcy:**  You have an appearance before Congress in 45 minutes, and I don’t see you here.  Where are you?

Steve looks up, and he knows it’s all over his face.  “I have to -” he starts, but she waves him off left-handed before he can get any further.

“Go,” she says, her voice shaky, but still quintessentially _her,_ strong and sharp and direct.  “Save the world, darling.”

Steve smiles down at the coverlet ruefully, and squeezes her hand.  “Hardly that,” he admits.  “Sometimes, I think I’m just the dancing monkey, again.”  

She’ll know what he means.

_“And these are your only two options? A lab rat or a dancing monkey? You were meant for more than this.”_

“Steven,” she says patiently, squeezing back.  “We all have to _play_ the dancing monkey, sometimes.  It’s how we hide how dangerous we are.”  Her eyes twinkle inside a papery face; tendons show clearly in her waisted neck and wrists, and her squeeze is weak.  

But she’s still one of the most powerful people he knows.  

It’s still an honor to be by her side, all these years later.

Even if she is giving him the smile she saves for his most particularly idiotic moments.  

“You know, darling,” she says with a sigh, “Even the bond sales made a big difference to the war effort.”

He laughs, as she doubtless intended.  

“If you must go dancing, Steve…”  She pulls her hand back and pushes herself up a bit in the bed.  “Then make me proud, and dance well.”

And if it sounds an awful lot like, “Give ‘em hell,” well…  It’s Peggy.  That was probably deliberate.

He brushes a kiss on her forehead and stands, then quickly texts Darcy as he walks towards the door.

> **Steve Rogers text to Darcy:** On my way now, only fifteen minutes away.  Already in suit.

He is.  It wasn’t like he _forgot_ he was appearing before Congress today…  

...Plus, if he wore the suit, Peggy could use the cut as a clue as to the year.

Steve will later blame the distraction for the fact that he runs right into someone entering the room as he leaves.

“Ooof!” the other person says, and Steve immediately thinks, _That is impressive,_ as he instinctively reaches out to steady the other man.  It takes a certain amount of skill - and nearly constant practice - to get that much femininity into even an Omega’s voice.  Steve should know:  he had never, ever managed it.

And then the second thing he thinks is, _Wait._

_I_ know _him!_

He stares, knowing his gaze is suspicious and frankly not caring much.  “Hello, Neighbor.”

The ethereal blond Omega from the apartment next door, who is not a nurse, not actually named “Kevin”,  and also - judging by the way he had handled his gun - not nearly as delicate as he can pretend to be, stares back.

 

* * *

 

Steve makes it to the Capitol Building on time, but only barely.

 

* * *

 

“You’ll have to forgive me, Senator.  I’m not as familiar with political double-speak as you are.”

It may not be as good as blowing up HYDRA, but Steve’s still having an awful lot of fun.

Vision had been right, that night last month when Steve found him scheming with Hill:  if the Avengers became active in politics, it _would_ be disastrous.  Right now, the very fact of their neutrality is why they’re able to move in and out of countries which would, ordinarily, send a mostly-American force packing.  

But Maria was also right, and someone was doing _something_ to manipulate the US government at the highest levels.  The only way to find out who - and why - was to infiltrate those offices - which, of course, was illegal in oh so many different ways, starting with the forged documents, and escalating up to the potential accusations of treason that would be leveled at them when - not if - they were caught.  

Steve, presented with the dilemma, had done what he always did:  He’d come up with a plan that put himself squarely in the most vulnerable position.

Step One:  Take Steve off the team.  So while he was still a “reserve member” of the Avengers, Steve was officially off the main roster as of a month and a half ago, and his actions were his own.

Step Two:  Make Steve the spokesman for the Avengers.  

_“How are we going to make you the spokesman if you’re not a member?” Hill had asked, picking the cabbage out of her lo mein with dexterously-held chopsticks._

_“Think about it, Maria.  Who’s the most well-known person to speak for the US Military?”_

_She closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the top rung of her chair.  “Oh, no,” she said, appalled._

...Which is how Steve officially became the President of the Avengers.  

Not on the team, but still a figurehead, he could now make political moves that had the weight of the team behind them without _actually_ involving their name.  It was, essentially, having his cake and eating it, too.  Functionally, the role was one that had been filled by both SHIELD and Tony in the past, but now, there _was_ no SHIELD, and Tony had done the same thing with the Avengers that he had done with his company, forfeiting his active leadership position to focus - rightly - on the creative and technical aspects.

(Steve asked Tony, once, if he would have spent more time representing the Avengers to the public if Steve hadn’t stepped up; Tony stared at him, saying, “Well, I’d have _hired_ someone, anyway,” and Steve had abruptly been _very glad_ that he was doing this.)   

Step Three:  Make himself available.  Nothing loathe there:  Part of the whole appeal of the plan was that Steve could do it while living and working close to Tony and Bucky, as well as being closer to Peggy - whose condition was deteriorating faster and faster - and Sam - who had been frankly relieved to move back to the city.  (“No more driving half an hour just to pick up some takeout?  No more worries about the locals going all _Deliverance_ on my ass?  I'll take it, thanks.”  “I don't think Upstate is quite _that_ dire, Sam.”  “Maybe not for _Captain_ _America_ , it isn't.”)

The other part of “making himself available” was the part being handled by Darcy:  Steve was now answering interview requests, speaking to the press, and maintaining a publicly-available email.  It… wasn’t the _most_ fun he’d ever had, but Steve has to admit that the USO tour was worse.

Step Four:  Involve himself in public affairs.  The combination of being independent, responsible, available, and active, meant that when trouble came, it was going to come _to Steve._ That, in turn, meant that the Avengers were reacting quickly and efficiently - in some cases, before their opponents even acted in the first place.

Steve had named it Operation: Lightning Rod.  Maria rolled her eyes and Vision estimated the chances, but the next day, Steve had set up an appointment with Darcy and gotten fitted for a suit.

Which was how he came to be sitting here, smiling through his teeth at the Republican Senator from Indiana and explaining that, no, the way the Avengers handled the Tesseract and the way they had handled the Mind Stone were _completely different._

“The Tesseract was yielded to the Asgardians because it was always theirs in the first place, plain and simple,” Steve says now.  “And while _you_ might be capable of stealing the cultural history of a sovereign people, the Avengers wanted to take the opportunity to do what was right.”  And then, because Senator Waverly looks just about to blow, Steve hurries on:  “The Mind Stone, on the other hand, was confiscated from a HYDRA fortress.  It represents a dangerous weapon - rather like the over 4,800 nuclear weapons still stockpiled in the United States despite decades-long calls for disarmament; why is that, do you think? - and the Avengers, specifically Vision, agreed to guard that weapon against those who might use it for ill.  Vision, in particular, guards the Stone at the specific behest of the Prince of Asgard, who considers Viz to be worthy of the utmost trust.”

Senator Waverly looks down his small, pig-like nose at Steve.  “The android -” he begins.

“The _person,”_ Steve interrupts sharply.  Waverly jerks his head from side to side.

“I _understand_ that you like to pretend the android is a person, Captain Rogers, but the fact remains that this ‘Vision’ is in possession of an extremely powerful artifact, and that the Avengers are not a sovereign power.  So explain to me why this ‘Mind Stone’ is not in the care of the United States government.”  

“With all due respect, Senator, the only method by which the stone could be removed from Vision’s control would be tantamount to murder.  Now, I hope I did not just hear one of our esteemed representatives advocating murder.  I would find that... very upsetting.”  Steve is probably not helping things by glaring like this; he can practically feel Darcy shouting at him in exasperation.

The senator blusters.  “Captain Rogers, are you _threatening_ me?”

Steve gives the bluff right back.  “Senator Waverly, I was making a declarative statement about my own, very sensitive, nature.”  He folds his arms so that his biceps bulge and the medals on his chest clank together.  He does not look particularly sensitive.

After the day he’s had, he also does not particularly care.  Bad enough that Congress is now trying to get the stone - that’s almost predictable, and it’s not the first time Steve has tried to make sure that a government didn’t get more power than it could handle.  He thinks all of DC will remember the last time he stepped in, and the _first_ time he stepped in is the whole reason he’s famous at all.  

No, worse than that is the fact that Congress seems to be retroactively attempting to chastise the Avengers for - let’s be clear here - _preventing an alien invasion_ in New York.  Senator Waverly and his cronies are even trying to settle the blame for Johannesburg entirely on Bruce and Wanda.  Not that there isn’t plenty of blame to go around - and it does seem to largely come back to the Avengers, sooner or later - but arresting and imprisoning one of the people working the hardest to make the world better and safer seems like a counterintuitive way to settle the debt.  

Steve leans forward in his chair, prepared to make that point explicitly clear - Darcy is going to _murder_ him -

\- And then his phone rings, an alert like an air-raid siren going off from it.  

Steve, just like everyone else, had silenced his cell before entering the chamber, so he’s not the only one looking at his pocket in alarm.

> **AIM ATTACK,[OAK RIDGE, TN](http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-weapons/us-nuclear-weapons-policy/us-nuclear-weapons-facilities.html#.V-VyjPArLIU)** **.  EXTRAC. 2 MIN.  WE HAVE YOUR SHIELD.**

“Excuse me.” Steve speaks politely to the Senator, but his voice is, nevertheless, authoritative and incontrovertible.  “I’m being called in.”

He doesn’t wait for the paunchy Beta’s reply before standing and making his way to the rear exit of the chamber.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe that once upon a time I was smug about this chapter; I'm so dubious about it now! I am not at all sure my plotting is coming out clearly, here. Please feel free to offer constructive criticism in the comments!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god, an update! This story is still back-burnered, but it is getting weekly progress, so it's not dead or anything. :) This is the last chapter of the segment I think of as "show how Steve is being Useful", and then we're back to the relationship drama.

Steve braces the shield, and mentally curses.  

The battle is not going well.

For one thing, AIM forces are making good progress in both of their goals.  The facility at Oak Ridge doesn’t actually have a store of nuclear weapons, as had been Steve’s first thought when he saw the target and the briefing, but it _does_ have stockpiles of both Highly Enriched Uranium _and_ of the extraordinarily volatile explosive elements necessary for the development of nuclear weapons.  So while there’s no danger of AIM getting a nuclear weapon as a direct result of this raid, if they succeed, they _will_ be most of the way to developing on themselves— except that whatever AIM builds is likely to have some uniquely awful twist all their own.

The HEU and the rocket components are, according to the schematics the Avengers had found, kept in two different buildings in the compound, and the Avengers have been forced to split up.  The girls are going after the HEU— only two of them, but it’s the smaller target; the components will be more useful to AIM.  

(“It’s like this,” Tony explains on the QuinJet.  “If _I_ were breaking in, yeah, you’d hide the stuff that goes boom, but if _Nat_ were the one doing it, you’d hide something else— secret records, maybe. It’s a matter of what we turn most easily into weapons.  Nat’s better with data, I’m better with tech...  AIM is pretty good at making something that fits into the HEU ‘spot’ in the schematic; the rockets, not so much.”)

So the girls are locking down the Uranium, and the rest of the team is taking the rest of the compound, and they’re getting their butts squarely kicked.  Not because the forces are overwhelming— there are a lot of them, but not _that_ many— but because the Avengers can’t coordinate worth a damn right now.

Even with the Avengers’ excellent comms, it’s almost impossible to hear one another.  There’s a lot of noise from the buildings getting hit, mostly metal and concrete shearing, but also screams and explosion, but also, more importantly— more _infuriatingly—_ the enemy has apparently developed sonic weapons.

“What the fuck is this?” Sam says via the comms.

“WHAT?”  Apparently, Rhodey is experiencing the deafening effects of the riotous din even more than Steve is.  Makes sense; Rhodey’s closer to the building.

Sam, on the other hand, seems to only be experiencing the effects of being _pissed the hell off._ “I SAID, WHAT THE FUCK _IS_ THIS SHIT?” he yells.

“Of _course_ they have sonic weapons.” Tony’s comm sounds like the only one not subject to the distortion, not least because he’s further away from the scrum, securing the third building, which is smaller and contains no life signs, on his own.  “Who doesn’t love sonic weapons? _I_ love sonic weapons, those have _always_ been my friends.”

“This has to be deliberate.” Steve keeps his voice even and firm despite the scowl creasing itself into his forehead.  He points exaggeratedly to a rectangular building with an awful lot of smoke coming out of the top, and tilts his head at the nearest team member— Rhodey, as it happens.

War Machine drops a wall with a missile, and Steve launches himself through as the bricks above collapse, only to find himself in what looks like some kind of very high-tech manufacturing room with half a dozen terrified civilians in jumpsuits.  Unfortunately, the civilians are currently under guard by ten soldiers in AIM uniforms.

The tricky thing about dealing with AIM is that some of their soldiers— most, in fact— are just soldiers.  Some, however, are Enhanced with the Extremis formula, and even one of the latter would be able to take out all of the civilians before Steve can reach them.  And since he made his entrance fairly precipitously— literally, as the bricks are “raining” down— he doesn’t have the option of sneaking up on them.  

 _He_ doesn’t, anyway.  

“Viz,” he says into the comm, “And Sam, if you can hear me.  Enter the building from the rear, evacuating six civilian personnel.  I’ll provide— _distraction!”_

The final word comes out on more of a grunt as his shield leaves his hand, and he backflips— deliberately showy— back through the same hole he’d come in through.  Most of the AIM soldiers take the bait, following him, leaving only two to guard the civilians.  Steve snatches his shield off of its rebound before backing all the way out through his impromptu entrance to where Rhodey can pick off the enemy as they exit the building.  “Count six enemy targets before engaging,” Steve orders, because he’s worried about some of the AIM troops escaping the little trap he’s set up.  It wouldn’t do for them to catch on early, after all.  “And then let’s cream the bastards.”

 

* * *

 

The good news is, only two of the ten AIM soldiers he’d spotted turn out to have Extremis.

The bad news is, they only discover this by losing the rest of the wall.

 

* * *

 

Half an hour later, they lay out the last of the cuffed AIM soldiers for pickup by the local law enforcement.  Sam and Steve have finished pulling civilians out of the men’s portion of the rubble; Wanda and Nat, on the other hand, don’t _have_ any rubble, having managed their extractions with almost no property damage.  Wanda and Nat, therefore, will not be paying for drinks the next time the Avengers have a team night.  

(Steve puts damage control on the list for the debrief, before remembering that he no longer runs the debriefs.  Maybe he’ll take a leaf out of Tony’s book, and send an email, instead.)

All of the civilians have been herded into a large tarpaulin tent, and volunteers from the town— largely the relatives of those who were at the facility today— have graciously agreed to provide hot drinks and donuts, blankets, jackets, and umbrellas to the facility workers who are waiting for whatever the police equivalent of debriefing might be. For the most part, the townspeople look relieved, and the facility staff resigned; all appear to be in good spirits, and as Steve escorts the last civilian over to the tent, a celebratory cheer goes up.  

After that, the mood changes, the fear and anger that had bloomed during the attack fading into a sort of irrepressible survivorship that makes Steve think of the freezing soldiers telling off-color jokes at Valley Forge.  A few of the burlier locals, mostly garbed in orange vests and ballcaps, hustle out from under the tent, rounding up wood and kindling (from the nearby sycamores), matches, lighter fluid (from somebody’s battered green pickup), and some marshmallows.

It’s right around this time that the press arrives.  Oak Ridge isn’t a large town— it has a population of less than 30,000— but it’s pretty close to Knoxville, which _is_ relatively large.  And the facility is, after all, involved in the development of nuclear weapons, so the arrival of a couple different news agencies isn’t exactly a huge surprise.  

Luckily— and Steve recognizes the irony of _him_ being the one thinking of this— they put on a good show.  

The Avengers are obviously hard at work when the media outlets arrive and start filming without so much as a by-your-leave.  (Well, to be fair:  if the media waited for a by-your-leave all the time, investigative journalism wouldn’t _exist.)_ Sam and Natasha are already obviously involved in medical care, Wanda and Vision in the containment of the fire.  Rhodey’s coordinating with the local enforcement, explaining to them in his calm, competent, authoritative voice how things work when the Avengers are involved in a conflict— jurisdiction doesn’t even scratch the surface— and Steve and Tony are obviously playing herd on the civilian contractors.  

 _It’s pretty good PR,_ Steve thinks, and then immediately hates himself for having become someone obsessed with PR.

He confers with Hill— who is still back at the Upstate HQ— via the comms, double-checking his understanding of the laws regarding the press.  A minute later, suspicions confirmed, he takes action, issuing a piercing whistle and bellowing into the silent moment that follows.

_“All representatives of the press - with me, over here!  Everyone else, keep doing what you were doing!”_

It does, at least, get everyone’s attention.  

When the cameras are all pointing at him, safely away from the injured and the traumatised, he does a quick headcount and organizes his thoughts.  He makes sure to keep his voice as firm as he’d kept it back in the war, when coordinating the Howlies:  clear, direct, and utterly uncompromising.   _Show no weakness, because you’ll receive no quarter,_ he thinks ironically, before pulling back the helmet of his uniform, running a hand through his hair to unstick it from his head, and forging ahead.  “I’ll give a brief statement, and then take some questions.  There are thirteen of you here, that means thirteen questions.  Understood?”

Multiple journalists nod.  One of the cameramen even nods his camera, which Steve privately finds pretty amusing.   _Ten bucks says that one’s a local,_ he thinks to himself before starting in on a little speech, the kind that's basically just a press release. He would have liked to have Darcy there, going over it with him in relentless detail like he had with Steve before the appearance in Congress, but there was no time to plan anything like that.  Steve will just have to try to do the Omega proud.

“The attack today was led by a group called Advanced Idea Mechanics,” he begins brusquely, “and while they do have some advanced ideas, this wasn’t one of them.  It was designed as a raid on the facility you can see to your left, which you will not be touring because it contains a significant portion of classified material.”   _And also because of the structural damage._  “The facility, which is involved in the production and maintenance of nuclear missiles, was only moderately damaged in the attack, and there while there were some injuries on the part of facility personnel, there were no fatalities.  The majority of the injuries are superficial burns, and all wounds are being treated at the scene by emergency responders as of now.”  He pauses, and makes a show of hitting his comm.  “Natasha, there weren’t any injuries that required hospitalization, were there?”

“Negative, Cap.  We got lucky.”

Steve decides to only repeat the first part of that for the press.

“At 2:30 this afternoon - East Coast time - Avengers intelligence sources decrypted live communications which allowed us to anticipate this attack.  Given the potentially devastating effects should the attack be successful, the decision was made that even reserve personnel such as myself should be called in, although we did not anticipate that the terrorist force necessarily require that level of firepower.”  He pauses.  “These AIM guys…  They’re not the Chitauri, let’s just say that.”

The reporters all laugh at that, and none of them spot it for what it is:  the first lie Steve has explicitly told them.  Actually, AIM have the potential to be terrifying, but he’s making a point of being reassuring right now.  Also, more importantly, there’s a chance that AIM might get stupid if he goads them, and he’s not about to pass on the opportunity.

“Let’s see, what else do you need to know…”  He ticks points off on his fingers as he goes through them.  “All weapons parts— they don’t do the whole warheads here, just parts— all weapons components are secure at this time; yes, we have notified both local and military authorities about our activity here; and at this time there is no estimate for when the facility will resume normal operations, but I have every faith that it will be sooner rather than later.”

He smiles the USO smile for them, and the whole group leans in.

“Now, I believe I said thirteen questions?”

An avid-looking Beta in horn-rim glasses shoots his hand up so fast he clips the ear of the cameraman next to him.  

“Alright, you’re champing at the bit; go.”

“Josiah Hilton, WYRD radio.  Captain America, would you say that this attack constitutes an act of treason, or possibly even an act of war?”

He shoves his microphone towards Steve with an unsettlingly eager look.

Steve nods slightly before leaning in to answer, as if it had been a reasonable question.  “That’s not my call; our government has excellent agencies whose job it is to answer those very questions, and I’m not going to usurp that authority.”

“But wouldn’t you say that by intervening here today, you have in fact _already_ usurped that authority?”

“You’ve already had your question,” Steve reminds him.  “Next?”

A black woman in a yellow-piped blazer with short, naturally hair and knife-edged wings on her eyeliner raises her hand quickly, and Steve nods at her.  

“What he said,” she responds, nodding at Josiah Hilton.  “It’s a damned good question.”

Steve smiles again, this time a little more intently than the USO version.  

“Well, then here’s a more full answer to that.  I would say that the Avengers, by nature of what we are, have a unique ability to respond that the appropriate agencies in this case lack— and I will remind you that we technically still retain our authorization under SHIELD.  More pragmatically…  No one in _any_ American enforcement agency should be arguing that it’s better to potentially let _terrorists_ seize _nuclear weapons components_ than to have us intervene.  If anyone _is_ trying to argue that, I would strongly urge that person to take a good solid look at his priorities.”

The woman nods, and smiles boysenberry-colored lips.  Steve mentally cheers before calling, “Next!”

“Captain America, I’m Ron Stepyavich, WLWT news.  You said all members of the Avengers were mobilized, but I don’t see Scarlet Witch, Vision, or Hawkeye here today.  Can you comment on their whereabouts?”

“Certainly.  Wanda and Vision are here, repairing as much physical damage to the compound as they can— right now from inside, which is why you can’t see them.  Unless you can see through walls?”

The reporters laugh en masse.  

“They’ll be out in a bit.  Hawkeye, on the other hand, was across the country on a classified mission—”  Clint’s family _is_ a classified mission, in essence.  “— and had no access to a private jet, the only form of transportation which would have been swift enough to allow him to join us here today.  While we did contact him when the alert went up, it was instantly clear that he wasn’t going to make it to the engagement in time, and, especially considering our estimates of the capabilities of the terrorist force, Hawkeye was counseled to continue on where he was.”  

Steve’s making it sound like that was a decision he made himself, but Maria Hill had actually had the whole conversation over and done with before he cleared the Capitol building.  

“Next!”

“Captain America, can you comment on the whereabouts of Thor, or the Hulk?”

“Certainly.  Prince Thor has returned to Asgard, in part due to his duties there, and in part to investigate certain classified information that was revealed shortly before the Sokovia event.”  

“And the Hulk?”

For the first time in the press conference, Steve hesitates, although only for half a beat.  “Bruce Banner, who, yes, is also known as the Hulk, is not currently a member of the Avengers roster, although he has been in the past and could, potentially, be again in the future.”  The reporter opens his mouth, and Steve cuts him off harshly.  “You’ve had your question.  Next!”

“Captain Rogers, is this intervention what you were referring to when you departed Congress today?”

Steve looks the young Omega journalist in the eye.  He stands out from his fellows, who are all in either fashion-forward suits or - in the case of Josiah Hilton from WYRD radio - ripped denim and flannel; instead, the Omega is in a sensible, if baggy, gray sports coat and no-frills tie, wire-rim glasses and disheveled, curly-dark hair.  He has absolutely _fantastic_ orthodonture when he smiles, which does _not_ set him apart, and an air of calm, waiting stillness, which most certainly _does._

“Do you habitually follow congressional hearings, Mister…?”

“Tanaka, sir.  And yes, especially when one of the Avengers is involved.”  He adjusts his glasses in what seems like a nervous gesture, made all the more noticeable by the fact that the young Omega does not otherwise appear to be nervous.  “If it helps, I also watched Mr. Stark’s appearance in 2010 rather avidly.”

Steve studies him for a moment, but then mentally steps back.  The young man strikes him as mysterious, but Steve deliberately chooses not to investigate.  

_After all, everyone has their secrets…_

“It was, in fact, why I left Congress rather abruptly today,” he confirms.  “I have enormous respect for the institutions of our government, and I wouldn’t have absented myself so abruptly for less than an All-Avengers summons.  Next!”

 

* * *

 

By the time Steve has completed the impromptu press conference— with reminders that none of the people gathered here, either from the facility or the community, are to have their faces on TV without permission, and that the press should avoid shooting footage in classified areas— the orange-clad militia-full of locals have gotten the bonfire going, and the camera crews can’t help but record footage of Steve herding shell-shocked facility staff towards warmth, light, and s’mores; Natasha and Sam smiling gently at a small herd of Betas in the med tent; and Tony playing what looks like Pokemon with a squad of nerdy-looking young people in ice packs and bandages.  They keep filming as handcuffed AIM soldiers are folded into police cars from three jurisdictions, and get a beautiful candid video of Rhodey consulting and joking with the Armed Forces representative who had hurried down.

Steve doesn’t smirk, but it’s awfully close.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Valmasy for beta-ing!

 

Steve wakes up in Tony’s bed, every muscle aching, to the sound of an argument.  A male voice and a female, which can only be Tony and Pepper; he knows that they don’t  _ only  _ argue, these days, but sometimes it does  _ seem  _ like that’s all they do.

_ Gosh, that time sure was hard on my friend Pepper...   _

Natasha saw this coming.  

_ Natasha didn’t tell me what the heck to  _ do  _ about it, though, so that’s not very helpful, is it?!   _

Steve  _ likes  _ Pepper; he really does.  He doesn’t agree with her on some things, and he worries that she doesn’t like  _ him,  _ but he admires her for a lot of reasons, and he really appreciates all she does for Tony. 

It’s just that, on the morning after they’ve gone against  _ deadly terrorists  _ trying to get their hands on  _ nuclear materials,  _ it seems like a bad time for her to be picking a fight with their mutual lover!

Groaning, he presses the pillow over his face, but the downside of his enhanced senses is that that doesn’t do much to drown out the furious voices coming from below.  

He throws the pillow to the foot of Tony’s bed— about fifty feet, it seems like, sometimes— and swings his legs over the side.  He sits on the edge of the bed rubbing his face for a moment— delaying the inevitable— before getting up and reaching for a shirt.

With any luck, there’ll at least be coffee downstairs.

 

* * *

 

There is no luck, and just about no coffee, either:  Pepper and Tony have left less than an ounce in the pot by the sink.

Steve turns to watch them fume at each other.  He’d have to be some kind of a moron to get in the middle of this, but he does hate to see them fighting.

“You said you were  _ retired!”   _

Pepper’s so angry her chic ponytail is practically standing straight up, and Steve thinks it might actually not be exaggeration to say her ears are so red they’re practically glowing.  He turns back to the sink and snags the bag of coffee beans out of the cabinet, but continues to watch the drama in the reflective surfaces of the chrome appliances.

“What I  _ said  _ was that I was an  _ active duty non-combatant!”   _

Judging by his voice, Tony’s feeling frustrated, and, to some extent, betrayed.  He’s angry enough he’s not even trying to hide his feelings anymore, as he usually does.  Steve winces at the raw pain of it.  Tony’s arms are crossed over his chest, his eyes cutting away from Pepper as if he can’t stand to even look at her.  Steve’s pretty sure that’s not how she’s going to read that body language, though; if Steve were as mad at Tony as Pepper is, he would probably read that posture as shame, and go for the throat accordingly.  All of which means that Steve should probably do something to interfere...

Pepper’s back is ramrod straight, her muscles so tense that she’s standing on her toes, even beyond what would be required for her pointy shoes.   _ “What does that even mean?!”  _ she snarls, her tone the exasperated and acidic tone of a woman who has been lied to many times before, and suspects that it’s happening again.

“It means  _ exactly what it sounds like, Pepper!”   _

_ “WHIRRRRRRRRR!” _

In the brushed-steel reflection of the coffee machine, Steve can see both of their heads whip around, neither of them willing to continue screaming over the noise of the bean grinder.  He pretends obliviousness as he lets the machine whir to a gentle stop, then turns it over and shakes the grounds into the lid so he can measure them into the filter.

“Tony...” He watches Pepper’s reflection turn her head away from him.  “You said you were  _ done.”   _ He achieved this much, at least:  her shoulders sag, a move away from rage and towards some gentler, if sadder, emotion.  Even through his own bubbling frustration, Steve finds himself feeling pretty bad for her.

Tony slumps, too, sitting himself on the edge of the dining room table.  “I never said that, Pepper.  I’m not  _ done.   _ I can’t be.”   _ I  _ am  _ Iron Man,  _ Steve fills in for him mentally, and reflection-Tony flicks a glance Steve’s way before looking back at her.  “The suits make me a target, but more than that... I can’t have the ability to make a difference and then just  _ not use it.   _ Ever since I came back from Afghanistan…  I  _ have  _ to do something.  And yes, I’m taking more of a backseat role, I’m contributing more in the way of funding and innovation than direct interference, but I’m still part of the team.  If they need me…  I’m gonna go.”

Steve can’t see what Pepper’s face looks like right at that second, but Tony’s head jerks back like he’s been slapped and when she speaks her voice is garotte-wire thin.  “So what you’re telling me is that if a person has superpowers, they have to use them?”  

Tony’s mouth goes slack, his eyes falling half-shut with the blow.

The silence curls and curdles in the open-air kitchen like the stench of badly burnt eggs.

After a minute, Steve finds himself moving to break the awkward stand-off by taking down a mug and firmly closing the cabinet door.  It makes a clacking sound as it shuts, and brings both their heads around, snapping them out of the fugue.

“I’m saying that if  _ I  _ have powers, I’m going to use them,” Tony says finally.   _ “And _ I’m saying that I’m sorry, because I thought you knew that.”  He jerks his head sideways, a movement of pure agitation.  His hands spread out in front of him like he’s holding onto the grill of a wrought-iron gate.  “You should’ve…  I should’ve made sure you knew that.”  

Pepper looks at him for a minute more— Steve pours coffee more quietly than he ever has in his  _ life—  _ then crosses to Tony and sets her own mug down beside his on the table.  She folds him up in her arms, pressing his head into her chest.  He clings onto her hard, hard enough to wrinkle her sharp-cornered suit.  She rests her cheek in the softness of his hair and, from the movement of her arm, rubs his back. 

Steve waits for Pepper to respond, but it seems like all she can say is, “Tony...” in a voice like her heart is breaking.  Then she sniffles, and her shoulders shake and heave with gasping breaths, pained cattle-like sounds escaping her.  She doesn’t cry pretty, Pepper:  she has red blotches all over her face and neck, and her makeup is rapidly progressing down her cheeks.  

Tony’s arms come around her and squeeze tightly, and Steve realizes, abruptly, that he has stayed too long.  He leaves his coffee next to the sink, and heads down to the cafe on five.

 

* * *

 

Sam’s in with Bucky at this hour, so once he has had his breakfast, Steve heads back up there.  He realizes, as he heads down the hallway, that they might not welcome the interruption, but only hesitates for a moment before continuing.  If they don’t want him there, they’re welcome to tell him that, after all.

Sam is sitting, sprawled, legs spread, in the rocker, and Bucky’s on the bed, back pressed against the wall, pillows piled around and behind him, but they both wave him in cheerfully enough that Steve figures he isn’t interrupting anything important.

“Hey, man.”  Sam’s smile is sideways, craned backwards over his shoulder as he rocks gently in the wicker chair.  Bucky’s smile is familiar, the same shy thing he’s had since they found him, but it doesn’t flicker as much as it used to.  Shy but steady, now:  it’s something.

“You’re early.”  

“Early?”

Steve realizes immediately what Bucky means.  “I usually come by the afternoon after the Avengers go out, talk about what they were doing,” he explains to Sam, moving further into the room.  He hadn’t realized that Bucky had noticed the pattern— heck,  _ Steve  _ hadn’t realized it was a pattern!  It was just where a visit usually fit in his schedule, that was all...  But then, Bucky had always been better at observing Steve than he himself had been.  “Sometimes Bucky helps me plan stuff out by listening to me while I go over, you know...  what I’m going say when they ask about our ops.”

“Oh, so you  _ do  _ plan some of that stuff out?” 

Steve smiles.  This was the right call, coming to Sam and Bucky.  He’s already starting to feel more balanced.  He kicks off the soft, fleece-lined boat shoes he’d worn out of the penthouse and drops onto the bed, putting himself about three feet away from Bucky at the head.  “Yeah, I guess so.”  Bucky pulls one of the pillows off his pile and, in response to an outstretched hand, tosses it over for Steve to tuck behind his back.  “When I have the luxury of not being on the run from a Nazi organization bent on destroying large swathes of humanity, sure;  _ then  _ I plan stuff out.”

Steve’s position on the bed is close enough that he can gently kick Sam with one sock-clad foot.

Bucky makes his  _ I am impatient with your stupidity  _ face— Steve remembers it well from a million examples in their adolescence.  “Why’re you  _ early,  _ Steve?” Bucky asks, and Sam’s gaze sharpens as he realizes that Steve dodged the question the first time around.

Aw, crap; they’re on to him.  

Steve fiddles with the blanket as he remembers.  “Tony and Pepper were having a fight.”  He scrunches his nose.  “It was…”

“Awkward?” Sam guesses, pushing back against the floor again.  The wicker creaks.

_ “...Really bad,”  _ Steve finishes with a shudder.

“‘Bout  _ you?”  _  Bucky looks skeptical.

Steve hesitates.  “I…  I don’t think so?”  He replays the conversation in his mind again.  “No, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t.  It seemed to be more…”  He tucks his hands around his knees, clasping them.  “She doesn’t want him to fight, I think?”

“With her?”  Bucky’s so confused he’s wrinkling lines into his forehead.

“No - oh, no.  Steve means in general,” Sam explains.  “You know, Tony’s got that Iron Man suit - have you seen it?”  Bucky’s face lights up - he always was a sucker for futuristic stuff - and he nods.  “Well, Tony’s been fighting as Iron Man for years— Pepper’s probably getting sick of it.”

_ “How long ago was that, anyway?” _

_ “Five years.  Gosh, that time sure was hard on my friend Pepper.” _

Steve makes an involuntary bitten noise, and the other two look over.  

“Nothing,” he blurts.  “I was just remembering - something Natasha said, sorry.  About Pepper.”

Sam cocks an eyebrow at him.  “And are you planning to share with the class?”

Steve makes a face, thinking it over.  “I didn’t really understand it at the time.  She was saying that Pepper probably sees Tony as not having progressed much in the last few years.  He’s— well, I can see that he’s not really the same guy he was when he built the armor, but I can also understand how it might not seem that way to Pepper... She’s been his CEO for almost five years, right?  That’s an awful long time to be stuck in the same place, doing the same thing, with no hope of a change in sight.”  All of sudden, Pepper’s discontent has taken on a new depth, an added dimension which elevates it from merely  _ irritating _ to  _ completely justified.   _ And while Steve still can’t agree with her basic premise that Tony should be out of the suit, he  _ can  _ understand a lot better why Tony’s refusal to do so grates so badly on her.  “And then she  _ would  _ have started to think things were changing.  Tony had promised to stop Avenging a couple years ago, even destroyed all his suits.”

Bucky frowns and tilts his head to the side.

“He made new ones,” says Steve, answering the unspoken question.  “After Insight— and also because of Insight; he couldn’t trust SHIELD to handle things, anymore.”

“So he relapsed.”  

“No.” Steve scowls over at Sam. “It wasn’t a relapse, because you can’t  _ relapse  _ into  _ doing the right thing.”   _

Sam just raises his eyebrow even higher, pursing his lips.  It should look ridiculous, but Steve still feels faintly scolded.

“...Alright, fine; I can see how  _ Pepper  _ might  _ think  _ it was a relapse...” he admits grudgingly, and Bucky chokes back a laugh at his refusal to admit he’s wrong.  “Alright!  Geeze!  Leave me alone!”  Steve tries to hold on to his annoyance, but honestly it’s just too difficult.  After all, it isn’t easy to make Bucky laugh, these days, and now Sam is laughing, too.  So Steve just grins good-humoredly, and waits for them to quiet down.

“So that’s what the fight was about?  Potts was mad at Tony for... being exactly who she thought he was in the first place?”  Sam pauses, thinking about it.  “Is this something I should tag Rhodes on?”

Much in the same way the that Steve goes to Sam when he wants to talk something over, they all know that if Tony goes to anyone, he goes to Rhodey.  Not as a therapist; as a best friend.

“No, because— I think that’s wrong.  Or, I mean...  I don’t think I really understand where she’s coming from?  It’s not that he is who he’s always been, it’s that...”  

Steve thinks of the way Pepper had slumped when Tony apologized, not for fighting, but because she hadn’t known he would.   _ “I should’ve made sure you knew that,”  _ Tony had said.

“...it’s that she  _ thought  _ he was going to change, and she’s mad at  _ herself  _ for not seeing the truth sooner.”  

There’s a silence in the room, and during it Steve finds himself watching Bucky’s hand as Bucky plays with the folds of the blanket with his flesh hand.  He presses a ridge of fabric on top of another ridge of fabric, smoothing it down to create a double fold, then a triple, then a quad...   There’s something about it, something  _ off,  _ something that’s ringing bells in Steve’s mind, and they’re alarm bells...

Steve realizes, suddenly, where he has seen the behavior before:  Mrs. Barnes, many,  _ many  _ years ago, angrily darning a sock rather than participate in a conversation in which she knew  _ damned good and well  _ that her husband was wrong.  

He jerks his head up to stare at Bucky’s face.  “What,” he says.

Bucky seems taken aback, and a bit embarrassed.  “What?” he asks defensively.

“You think I’m wrong,” Steve asserts.  “Really wrong.  Wronger than Alex Trilby was in 1938 when he told you that little Reuben Bader would never amount to anything.  I  _ know your face,  _ Bucky; c’mon.  Spill.”

Bucky hunches his shoulders, and pleats the blanket again before shaking his head sharply and tossing the whole thing away from him.  “...Fine.  So Potts is waiting for Stark to change, right?  And nothing happens?”  He slouches a little, straightening one leg out with a disturbing  _ crack  _ from the knee.  “And then when something  _ does  _ happen— her Alpha gets an Omega, finally, after all these years,  _ finally _ lookin’ like he’s thinkin’ of settlin’ down— it turns out the Omega is another Alpha and also that he’s  _ you?   _ I mean, you ain’t exactly the king of sittin’ back and lettin’ other people handle it, Stevie.”  

Sam’s eyes widen slowly, incredulously, at the sudden thickening of Bucky’s accent; Steve tries not to grin.  

“So now her Alpha, who ain’t exactly been gettin’ any easier to live with, who’s been givin’ her less of his attention because he’s got a Kept  _ other Alpha,  _ who told her he was gonna change and then  _ didn’t...   _ Now  _ that Alpha  _ has gone and gotten into a fight,  _ again,  _ with people who could  _ kill him,  _ and he’s tellin’ her that  _ ain’t ever gonna change? _  Is that what happened?”

Steve nods, silently.  

“Okay,” Bucky says, and Steve braces; this is going to be  _ great,  _ because Bucky is  _ being Bucky again,  _ but it’s also gonna hurt like hell, because the last time Bucky wore that look it was 1944 and Bucky’d been about to punch him in the face over lying to recruiters.  “So yeah; sure.  I buy this.  Potts is mad he’s still fightin’, sure— but that ain’t all, no way.

“Potts is a good lookin’ woman.  She comes by every once in awhile to visit me, maybe because she feels bad for me, maybe just to piss Stark off, I dunno.  But she does.  Good-lookin’ lady.  Hey, how old is she, do you know?”  

Steve doesn’t.  It’s a rhetorical question, though, because Steve  _ knows  _ that tone, and it’s the one Bucky uses when he’s about to win a fight.  Either he does actually know her age, or he’s guessing close enough for horseshoes.

“Thirty-nine,” Sam answers for him.

“Oh, thirty-nine!  That’s great!  And she’s been with Stark for how long?”

Steve shifts uncertainly.  “Five years romantically; I’m not sure  _ how  _ long she worked for him, before that.  I think it was over a decade.”

Bucky laughs, and it’s harsh and caustic but it’s still a noise Steve would have bet a month ago that Bucky wouldn’t make anymore, and  _ God  _ it’s good to hear it again.  “Fifteen years.   _ Seriously?   _ She’s been waiting for this Alpha asshole to get his act together and get with the program for  _ fifteen fuckin’ years,  _ and now, only a few years out from menopause, she’s finally realized it’s never gonna work, and  _ all she did was shout?”   _ He scoffs.  “She’s got a lot more self-control than I would, pal.”

Steve actually gets as far as blurting, “What does menopause have to do with—” before he gets it.  It feels almost exactly like the time he accidentally touched the metal part of a cord while plugging it in, a little pain and tingling that has him drawing back his mental hand before he’s even processed what he’s feeling.  “...You think she wants  _ kids?!”   _

“I would, if I was her,” Bucky says.  “She’s a nice lady, got a lot of love in her heart, and Stark’s old enough that if he ain’t thinkin’ about it, he should be.  Why  _ wouldn’t  _ she want his kids?”

Steve blinks, and then blinks some more.  “It just seems like a really bad idea,” he says finally.

Sam cocks his head to the side, as if Steve has inadvertently revealed something highly interesting.

“Why?” Bucky asks.

Steve thinks about it, and then shrugs.  “No idea,” he says honestly. 

“You think Stark would be a bad dad.”  Sam sounds more observational than judgemental about it, but Steve winces anyway.

“Only a little!  Or— not even that, really.  I just think being a dad and a superhero at the same time is a bad plan.  That’s all.”

“You tell  _ Clint  _ that yet?” 

Steve winces again.  “Clint’s part time,” he points out.

So is Tony.  

None of them says it, though, and anyway, Tony wasn’t part time until recently.

Sam blows out sharply enough that his cheeks puff out, and purses his lips.  “Okay, man.  Okay.  I am not even  _ touching  _ that one, let’s just  _ move on.” _

Bucky snorts.  “Quick, somebody change the subject,” he says, and Sam rocks the chair so that the wicker creaks in pointed agreement.

“How’s work?” Steve asks, tipping his head sideways to indicate which one of them he means.

Bucky brightens immediately, a soft expression suffusing his face as he starts talking about his latest project: a manual for building a butterfly garden.  Steve steals a piece of notebook paper and a pen, sketching as he talks, starting with a drawing of a three-legged wolf in a motorcycle jacket with a butterfly dancing around its nose.  The next drawing is Sam as a goose, casually walking down a patient-looking wolf’s head and shoulders, tail-feathers tipped sassily to the side.  Then a third wolf, still three-legged, enormous head lying on the floor, long-suffering sigh in mid-progress, with a grasshopper mouse gleefully snuggling up to its cheek.

After that, he moves on to another mouse picture, this one with the mouse leaping ahead, the goose patiently waddling after it, snapping at amorphous tentacular threats that seem too close.  Another mouse, this time triumphantly planting a little mouse-sized flagpole in a dead octopus— he makes sure to draw little X’s for the eyes as he listens to Bucky explaining about the “build your own robot” kit for ages 9-13 that he was apparently working on before the butterflies.  After that, a pirate mouse, in swashbuckling hat and dramatically blowing cape, a mask pulled down over its eyes, and once he has that done, he sketches in the deck of a galleon behind it so that the mouse is standing on the join of the forward rail and the bowsprit.  

Bucky looks over his shoulder right about then and actually smiles, so Steve does another one, working quickly, a sleekly fluffy calico pointing a gun straight at the viewer with hell and determination in its eyes.  He looks up at Bucky questioningly, and Bucky smiles again, quick and fleeting, but real.  “Looks just like her, Stevie.”  

Steve grins.

“Gonna do Hill?” Sam asks, and Steve obliges, sketching a skink with no hairstyle but with gorgeous long eyelashes who’s typing urgently into a computer.  He follows it up with other characters from the online comic, animal versions of Nick, of Phil, even of Cameron and Loki.  

The last thing he draws is a raccoon, high up on an electrical pole, clearly wondering whether to try the line or to jump.

 

* * *

 

Not long after that, Bucky’s face stills.  He makes a small, forward movement of his jaw, one Steve’s seen before— it’s the one that means he wants to bite his lip, but doesn’t want to give that much away and so is holding himself back.

He shifts in his nest of pillows again.  “Somethin’ I wanted to ask ya,” he mutters, eyes flicking towards Sam, then to Steve, then back and forth again swiftly before dropping to his hands.  Even without the withdrawing of his body language, the thickness of the accent would have been clue enough that he’s emotionally riled again.

Sam brings the wicker to a halt.

“What’s up, Buck?”

Bucky looks at Steve but jerks his head sideways at Sam before tilting it to the side in what Steve had come to label as his “Omega look,” because Bucky knows  _ damned well _ that it draws attention to his neck.  “He gonna be joinin’ us, this month?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That sure didn't feel like 3k+ words, did it? 
> 
> Next chapter should be out next or so.
> 
> And adding that this fic now has *art* to go with it, from the FTH auction! *swoons* Check it out here: <https://chibisquirt.tumblr.com/post/157517297347/alright-ive-been-hoarding-this-long-enough>.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Valmasy for the beta, as always!

It takes a second for the penny to drop, but when it does, Steve just about loses his jaw.

“Bucky.   _ What?” _

He and Sam both sit straight up, Steve catching himself only just in time to keep from grabbing Bucky by the shoulders, Sam holding his palms out in a show of disarmed-ness, right before using his field-medic voice.   _ “Hold up, Rogers!   _ Okay, I know, I  _ know,  _ man, I heard it, but there’s a lot to unpack there, so just -  _ hold on!” _

Steve’s fingers are twitching as he settles back down against the headboard again, his hackles still all the way up.

“First of all— before anything else— Barnes, the answer is ‘no,’ and the answer is ‘no’ at  _ least _ because  _ I  _ don’t want to.  I don’t swing that way, and even if I did, I don’t sleep with patients.  Probably no one ever talked about this with you, so you couldn’t have known, but that’s a pretty serious breach of ethics in counseling, so no...  That will not be happening.

“And second of all…”  Sam pinches the bridge of his nose then crosses his arms over his chest, tapping his fingers on his biceps as he thinks:  one-two-three, one-two-three.  Then he sighs, lets go, and shakes his head.  “There are a lot of things that could come second, but we’ve got Steve here right now, so I think I’m gonna go ahead and be selfish on this one.  Steve.  If I  _ were  _ on the table, would  _ you  _ want me to join you?”

Steve gapes at him for a full minute, completely unable to answer.  He feels pressure rising in his neck as his mouth flaps soundlessly, but there’s no— he’s not— he can’t  _ answer—  _ it isn’t— 

“You— you don’t swing that way,” he manages, but he can feel an ugly flush rising up his neck and cheeks.  Neither of the other two is dumb enough to be put off by that particular diversion, and— 

Steve lets go of a high, panicked noise, and all of a sudden he can feel Bucky’s hand on the back of his head.  Bucky pushes until his head is down on his knees, and, driven by muscle memory, Steve breathes, focusing on the movement of the fine muscles around his ribs.  In and out, in and out...  

He knows this; he’s done it before.  In… And out....  

In.

And out.

Sam sighs again, and looks at Bucky.  “Think that’s a yes?” he asks Bucky speculatively.  

Bucky sighs, too.  “Steve ain’t good at that kind of question,” he says over Steve’s head.  “He comes up with all these caveats - _ if, _ and  _ if only, _ and  _ once maybe when.  _  So the heart of the answer is, ‘sure, yeah, he’d be happy to have ya,’ but that doesn’t mean that’s his  _ actual  _ answer.”

It’s a little unfair that that summary is so completely correct.

Steve breathes in.

And then out again.

Sam gives Bucky a narrow-eyed look, and unfolds one arm long enough to point at him.  “We’re coming back to that,” he warns.  “For now...  Steve.”

Steve looks up at him, shoulders tense, and focuses on his breathing.  In, and out.  In, and out.

Oh, shit, this was going to be bad— 

“It’s okay, man,” Sam says, voice kind.

Steve completely forgets about his breathing.

“I’m not mad at you, I’m complimented, it’s fine.  I’m sure if I swung that way, I’d be game as hell, too.  I’m not offended, I’m  _ not mad.” _

Steve nods, maybe a bit too much, and straightens up a little from his hunch again.

“Steve,” Bucky calls, mostly to get his attention.

It works; Steve looks over, which is why the pillow Bucky throws at him is able to hit him perfectly square-on in the face.

At that, finally, Steve smiles.  “Thanks, Bucky,” he says, and tucks the pillow beneath his knees.

He’s only been awake for two hours, and already this day is  _ exhausting.   _

 

* * *

 

Sam thinks - and Bucky may or may not agree with him, but he goes along with it - that he and Bucky should talk about the rest of the implications of Bucky’s question without Steve.  

A small part of Steve resents it.

Another part of Steve, one that’s about the same size as the first piece if he’s honest, is grateful that he doesn’t have to be the one to explain to Bucky why Sam’s joining them or not is  _ not Steve’s decision.   _

So he doesn’t argue when Sam urges him to go find Tony. 

He  _ is  _ a little surprised when Bucky asks if he’s going to hunt down Pepper, too.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Steve answers, surprised.  “Do you think I should?”

Bucky avoids his eyes.  “She comes to visit me, sometimes,” he says.  “‘Bout every third weekend, or so.  Brings me books.  She seems nice.”

Steve remembers  _ this  _ voice, too:  This is the voice of a Bucky who reached out to Marty Roleson.  

Marty Roleson had been screaming at his girl in an alley, about politics of all things, and Steve Rogers had naturally enough stepped in.  He hadn’t got far, though, when Bucky had shut him up:

> “ _ Shove off, Steve, it ain’t like that!  No, I said _ shove off!”  _  Bucky had looked Marty in the eye, and Marty had glared back like an angry crocodile.  “Marty - I heard about your brother.” _
> 
> ...What?,  _ Steve had thought. _
> 
> _ “I know he was a lot to you, alright?  You need anything?” _
> 
> _ Marty’d looked down, and shaken his head.   _
> 
> _ “You know what I’m gonna say next, Marty.” _
> 
> _ “Yeah.”  Marty shoved ragged red hair out of his eyes.  “Sorry, sweetheart.” _
> 
> _ His girl, a thickset blonde with a face like a horse but a helluva kind smile, shook her head.  “It’s okay, daddy.  I know.”  She reached out and took Marty’s left hand again, and Marty looked at his feet again before looking back up. _
> 
> _ “Thank you,” he said.  “Both of you.  You stopped me from doing something I shouldn’t.  Clara—”  His hand tightened on the blonde’s.  “Clara’s been everything, through all this.”  He looked at her again, heart in his eyes.  “She doesn’t deserve to be shouted at.” _
> 
> _ He shook both their hands before they went on their way. _
> 
> _ They were halfway home before Steve spoke.  “I didn’t know he had a brother,” he said. _
> 
> _ “Michael,” Bucky said.  “TB.  Nine years or so now, but he died last month.”  He gave Steve a pointed look.  “People get stupid when their families die.  They say things they don’t mean.” _
> 
> _ Steve kicked a rock, and didn’t answer. _

Steve doesn’t, particularly, want to go see Pepper— she was  _ wrong,  _ during the fight this morning, and anyway she doesn’t  _ like _ him— but he compromises and sends her a brief email  _ (Are you okay?  If you need anything, please let me know. -SGR)  _ before heading up to the penthouse.

FRIDAY passes him through to the labs.

When he finally finds Tony, there are a pair of oversized headphones covering his ears, and even though they’re the noise-cancelling kind, Steve can still hear ear-damaging levels of rock music blasting out.  The schematics spread in front of him are, from what Steve can tell, some kind of weapons, not a repulsor, but something similar…

...Oh.  They’re the sonic weapons AIM was using yesterday. 

Steve watches for a moment as Tony fiddles with various metrics on a side-panel, and then Tony— still, apparently, unaware of Steve’s presence - says, “Run it, FRIDAY,” and the deafening rock stops abruptly.  

Steve reaches out and taps Tony on the shoulder.

Tony whirls and falls off his stool, coming to a stop on his ass on the floor, one hand up and ready to fire a repulsor, if he’d been wearing one.

Steve steps back, and holds up his hands.

Tony shudders, and uses the armorless hand to pull the headphones off.  “Jesus, Steve!  Remind me to put a bell on you!”

“Wouldn’t have done any good,” Steve points out.  “You wouldn’t have heard the bell, either.”

“Point.”  Tony accepts a hand up, then flashes Steve a bitter smile.  “Coming to check on me?”

“Yes,” Steve answers seriously, and Tony lets his gaze fall before darting it away.  Steve decides to keep talking before Tony can build up a mental head of steam.  “Look, Tony, I appreciate everything you do for the team—”  Tony stiffens.  “— and it’s very important that we get those weapons analyzed; frankly, attacking our communications was a damned good strategy on their part, and we don’t want anyone to use it again.  But that was a tough thing, this morning.  If you wanted to talk about it…  I’m here, okay?”

Tony rubs at his face.  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he says shortly.

Steve’s taken aback.  “Okay,” he agrees.

“Just—”  Tony rubs at his face again, this time wiping at his mouth.  “Can we go back to bed?” 

“Sorry?”

“We can take tablets with us, I mean, we’d still be working, I just— can we go back to bed together?  Please?”  

Tony blinks at him, and Steve realizes that part of the face rubbing was to cover that Tony’s been crying.  He tries not to let his voice soften too far as he says, “Sure, Tony.”

So they do:  Tony takes the headphones and a tablet, Steve takes a more regular headset with a microphone with  _ his  _ tablet (among other things, his agenda for the day includes talking through with Darcy how his press conference went over), and they curl up under the covers, still wearing t-shirts, but not pants.  Before Tony dives into his work, though, Steve touches him lightly on the shoulder.

“About Pepper.”

Tony doesn’t even roll over to look at him.

“Don’t,” he cuts Steve off, shoulders hunching.  “I can’t— I can’t talk about her right now.”

Steve nods, then realizes Tony can’t see him right now.  “Okay,” he says instead, pulling the blankets up and tucking them in around Tony’s shoulders.

They huddle together, sharing their body heat, keeping silent companionship.

They work.

 

* * *

 

The debrief with Darcy goes about as well as Steve had expected, which means it’s about the only good thing that happens in the whole long, terrible day.  He was overall pleased with the press conference: “You’re much better at this than I thought you would be.  Not nearly as ‘aw, shucks’-y as expected, Captain.”  He grins widely, and Steve sinks into that warm charm a little bit further.

However, the press conference was small potatoes next to Steve’s performance in Congress, as it turns out.  “Are you kidding me?” the Omega asks, wide-eyed, and starts sending him videos.  Comedians, news anchors, memes, tumblrs, Facebook posts, and more:  apparently, everybody goes nuts when Captain America stands up to Congress.  

“Do they love me, or hate Congress?” Steve asks, baffled, staring at a gif of himself explaining about his “own, very sensitive, nature”.  As soon as the version of him in the picture stops talking, a small, animated person of no particular gender with stars in their eyes pops up, clearly swooning over him.  A trio of pink and purple hearts floats over the drawn-in person’s head.

“Yes,” Darcy says pointedly.  “But just to be safe, keep up the sass.”

“Well, it’s a lot easier with elected officials,” Steve says worriedly.  “They work for me.  With the public, I work for them; it’s different.”

Darcy looks surprised, but then shrugs.  “Just pretend they’re all your friends,” he advises.  “That’s what I do.”

Steve privately thinks that Darcy’s personality is such that everyone probably  _ is  _ his friend, but he doesn’t say it.  On his tablet, a clickbait article links to video of the Avengers at the Oak Ridge cleanup.   _ #4, _ it says,  _ Although s’mores were invented in 1927, Captain America seems to have had  _ his _ first encounter with them last night. _

He clicks through to the next picture.   _  #3:  Does Scarlet Witch use magic to make her hair that good? _

Well, the photo  _ does  _ show her  looking very lovely by the firelight...

“Darcy,” Steve frowns, “We need to do something about the Bruce and Wanda problem.”

 

* * *

 

Steve actually has four email accounts, these days:  a personal account, a confidential Avengers account, a public Avengers account, and the Gmail account he maintained as “Eva Madison”, the artist and author of the  _ Marisa Knoll  _ comics.  Tony had made him a custom app for all his devices to handle the inbox-overload— Steve had required, and gotten, a color-coding system to let him know which account mail was coming from— and Steve makes a point of only handling the “Eva Madison” email once every two or three days, precisely as if he were an anxious young woman who also had a day job.  

The email he sent to Pepper on Bucky’s advice was sent from his personal account, because, Steve reasoned, it was a personal matter.  When she replies to it, though, the reply goes to the Eva Madison email— even though Pepper isn’t supposed to know Eva Madison  _ exists,  _ much less that “she” is actually Steve.

_ Thank you for your concern,  _ her email reads.   _ I will be in touch with your partner regarding the next steps presently. _

It’s signed,  _ V. Potts.  _

He thinks and thinks about it, but in the end, he has to admit defeat.  Pepper is a continual puzzle to him, and he has no idea what she means by it at all. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I was lying in bed and contemplating the loneliness of my celibate existence the other night, when I realized that the part of this fic I really want to write changes from Steve POV to mixed (mainly Bucky) POV in about four or five chapters. How would we feel about that, given that this has previously been 100% Stevealicious? Please put thoughts in the comments!


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks, as always, to Valmasy and also Buhfly for beta help on this.

“You owe me a damn drink,” Sam says as soon as he walks in.  Tony is gone at this point, vanished away upstairs to change and get ready for a Stark Industries gala this evening.  Steve _had_ been planning to use the evening to draw, pending the completion of the fallout from his Congressional visit and the op, but around one, Sam had called him to explain that They Were Going To Talk this evening, instead.

“Yes, Sam,” Steve had said humbly, and then had thrown himself into his work to distract himself from the small swarm of worries that immediately sprung up.

Now, Sam is walking in and throwing himself on Steve’s couch, and the swarm has returned with a vengeance.

“Is Bucky okay?”

Sam’s eyeroll is epic.

Apparently, Bucky is, in fact, okay.

“What did you talk about?” Steve asks next, and, okay, that was a pretty stupid question, too.   Sam can’t tell him, of course.  

Confidentiality.

_ See?  I’m learning!, _ he thinks sarcastically.

Then he gives up and just hands Sam a beer.

“First things first,” Sam declares five minutes later, when he has an entire beer and two-thirds of a burger safely inside him, “everything I’m going to talk about tonight, I got permission to talk about with you.  I pushed a little on that, because I knew that the best step to resolving _half_ of this mess was going to be getting you involved; otherwise, I would not have pushed.”

Steve nods humbly.  “Okay, Sam.”

“Gimme another beer.”

“Okay, Sam.”

“And stop making fun of me.”

Steve snorts, toasting him with his bottle.  “Good luck, Sam.”

“Yeah, okay; I see how it is.”

But Sam is smiling.  Steve takes the win.

“Alright, so here’s the deal:  two things, actually.  Number one:  Barnes has been using a shortcut—again, I have permission to tell you this, but you can’t ask too many questions here, either—he’s been using a shortcut to make progress.  Helped in the short term, but it handicaps him in the long term; we just ran into the long term.”

Steve nods, thoughtful, and takes a pull of his own beer.  “What’s the shortcut?”

Sam’s smile is small and merciless.  It involves a lot of singular-eyebrow arching.  “Ever read  _ 1984?”   _

“Yeah,” Steve answers, disconcerted.

“‘Kay, then:  He’s been using doublethink.  You’re Steve, and he knows you, trusts you, all that. But you’re  _ also  _ his Handler.”

Steve makes his way to one of the bar stools on the other side of the kitchen counter, and sits, hard.  “What?” he asks, and his own voice sounds  _ horrible:  _ broken and appalled, like he’s just seen a video of himself vivisecting cats or something.  

“And Handlers... Bucky’s Handlers have always gotten to choose who join his Heats.”

Steve says several words which Darcy has encouraged him to delete from his vocabulary. 

“He knows you’re not really his Handler, too, man.”  Sam drinks coolly from his beer, watching Steve.  “I said doublethink for a reason; it’s not a delusion, it’s a simultaneous belief.”

“Oh, well then.  That’s _so_ much better—you know, I never really understood that concept.”

Steve winces; he hadn’t actually meant to be  _ that  _ bitter.  Sam waves it off, though.  

“Doublethink is like...  Imagine you were sitting here, on this couch, just like this, and then a bright light appeared, and the voice of God boomed out at you:   _ That is not a couch.  That is a cow.   _ You’d know it was still a couch, right?  I mean, you can see it, you can feel it, definitely a couch.”

Steve stared.  “...Yes?” 

“But I bet you’d get up, right?”

_ Now  _ he laughed.  “Yeah, alright.  I’d get up.  Point.”

“Exactly.  And it  _ is  _ better, Steve.  He knows who you are; he just keeps expecting to see someone else, and it’s easiest to just put you in both roles.  So we had a long talk about confronting that today, and he’s gonna work on it.  Already is, actually—I’ll say this for your guy, man, he is  _ smart as hell.   _ He’d already worked half this shit out himself, just based on your face when he said that this morning.”

Steve feels his face do an awful thing where he tries to smile with pride and also struggles not to cry at the same time.  Sam just lets him, sucking on his beer and watching him out of the corner of his eye.

Once Steve is... _mostly_ recovered, he goes on.  “We also talked consent.”

Steve reaches for his beer again.

“Yeah, okay, I know, but it’s not as bad as it could be,” Sam tells him.  “Most of this I can’t tell you.  But I  _ can  _ tell you—and _he_ should be telling you this, too, but just in case he can’t get it out, he really wants me to say it, and that is not something I would normally do but, man, I really think _you_ need to _hear_ it—I _can_ tell you that he’s always consented to everything you’ve ever done to him, and he doesn’t see that changing.  So there’s that.”

Steve feels about three millimeters tall.  “...Thanks?”

Sam nods, _you're welcome._ “Which brings up the third thing," he says.

“Oh, God...”

Sam's gaze is merciless as he watches Steve squirm into a slouch on the sofa.  “You gonna be there this next Heat?" he asks.  "Bucky wants to know.  And it’s coming up.”

Steve cringes.  “Does he...  Does he want me there?”

Sam takes a little too long to answer, scowling and peeling the label off of his shitty beer.  It’s not an _unreasonable_ amount of time to spend thinking about the question, but since Sam has been so ready and on the spot with all the other answers in this conversation, it rings alarm bells, and Steve feels his heart sink sullenly to somewhere around his bellybutton.  

“Yesss...” Sam says slowly,  _ eventually,  _ “but.”

He doesn’t say anything else, and Steve waits until he’s mentally dancing from side to side like a seven year old in dire need of a restroom.   _ “What,  _ Sam?”

“I don’t know.”  Sam’s beer label is in shreds, now, and the last third of the burger is gone.  “There’s something else, something bugging him...  But he hasn’t told me what, much less told me to tell you, so...”  He shrugs.  “For now, all we know is, he wants you there.”  He pauses, looking awkward.  “And, you know, also _me,_ but we already talked about how he’s not getting that one.”

Steve grins at last, relieved to hear this aspect of it.  Sam doesn’t go for men, even Omegas, and Steve  _ knows  _ that—had known it before he introduced him to Bucky, although he’s mostly pretty sure that wasn’t a factor—but he still sometimes, well... _looks._  

For artistic reasons, mostly, he tells himself.  

“So he  _ was  _ trying to get you there?”

Sam spreads his arms.  “What can I say, man?  Why would he want to miss out on all this?”

Steve smiles quietly into his bottle, and doesn’t answer.

“And hey—speaking of incredibly handsome men,” Sam adds.

The laugh comes out of Steve before he realizes it’s going to.  “So humble!”

“I try, Steve, I try."  Sam slouches, echoing Steve's posture, now that the heavy stuff is done.  "How’s Tony?”

Steve grimaces, sighs.  Squashes a spurt of rage at Pepper, who really hadn't done anything _wrong,_ exactly.  “Coping,” he says, wobbling a hand side to side.  “Working through it—focusing on business and development to distract himself, mostly.”

“Hard to see that working when she’s literally his boss.”

Steve grimaces again, shrugging this time.  “No choice, is there?  We don’t exactly get vacations in our line of work.”

Sam shakes his head.  “Have I mentioned lately how deeply fucked up that is?  And I know exactly how hypocritical I’m being by saying this—”  

Sam has actually been offered vacation, on multiple occasions, and insists that counseling Bucky is such a comparatively light load that he doesn’t need one; they all know he’s covering for his own anxieties, and so far none of them have called him on it, but it’s only a matter of time.

“ —but seriously, you can’t keep going forever.”

“I’m not!”

“Uh-huh.”

"Really, Sam."

The eyebrows are up, again.   _"Really,_ Steve." 

“If nothing else,” Steve points out, killing the discussion dead, “I get to take Bucky’s Heats off once a month.”

(Neither of them says it, but they both know that  _ that  _ isn’t really  _ time off  _ per se, either.)

 

* * *

 

Bucky’s Heat comes the next week, and for the first time since August, Steve is nervous about it.  

He arrives late, having been in Haiti to help with cleanup after a recent devastating hurricane, and having been still covered in blood and ash when his plane arrived in New York (and therefore badly in need of a shower).  Typically, he would get to Bucky’s room an hour or so before the Heat started and they would catch up, joking and chatting _almost_ like they used to, until the wave of sensuous lassitude broke over their heads.  Today, though, between the transit time and the time spent showering and cleaning up as a basic courtesy, he's lagging badly, and Bucky is already mostly non-verbal by the time Steve arrives.

It’s less than reassuring on the “consent” front. 

“Bucky,” Steve says, face twisting when he sees Bucky's condition.  “Bucky, pal, you gotta talk to me.”

Bucky’s eyes narrow and he tilts his head back so that Steve can see the long column of his neck.  He runs his metal hand up and down it languidly and then, eyes still sharp, takes a pinch of his own neck and twists, sharply, so that it stands out red like a bite.

“Bucky!”

“Steeeeve.”  The metal hand drifts downward, towards Bucky’s chest, and Steve instinctively jumps forward to arrest its movement.  

“Stop it, Buck.  Don’t—don’t hurt yourself.”  He clutches at the metal arm, already knowing that Bucky can probably overpower him if he really wants to try.  He  _ doesn’t  _ try, though—possibly the idea of fighting is too much to handle in his current state.  Instead, he snuggles into Steve’s arms, shivering and panting.  

Steve remembers the tension in Bucky over even touching Steve a bare week ago and his resolve firms.  

“I need to know that you consent on this, Bucky.”  Sighing, he pets Bucky’s hair.  There's no way to be entirely sure that he’s getting through to Bucky; all he can do is keep trying, and hope for the best.  “Buck, I need to know that this is something you want.”

A soft snort, familiar and dear, comes from Bucky.  “Steve,” he repeats.  

But the tone is different this time, Steve realizes with a start.  Not the low, needy moan which had cut directly through him a minute ago, but something tarter, more exasperated.  

Familiar.

_ “Bucky?”  _ he asks.

Bucky rolls his eyes—non-verbal but not, Steve finally realizes, irrational.  Not yet, anyway.   _“Steve,”_ he repeats—it might be the only word he can manage for the next day and half—and then rolls his eyes again, pressing upward to nuzzle along Steve’s neck.  He licks at the base of it, broad and playful rather than delicate or erotic, then nips at Steve’s ear so that Steve shivers convulsively.  

Then he pulls back, raising his eyebrows pointedly, and strips off his shirt.

Steve smiles back, slightly embarrassed at his own mother-henning.  “Got it, Buck,” he says with a short laugh.  He tosses aside his own shirt and leans in to take Bucky’s mouth.

And after that, neither one of them talks much at all.

 

* * *

 

When Steve staggers upstairs to Tony that evening, Tony welcomes him in with warm, work-scarred hands, holding tight to him and whispering that he’s missed him, that he’s glad Steve is home.  It isn’t a declaration of love, but it’s damn close, and Steve falls asleep in Tony’s bed with a smile on his face.

Of course, the next morning, he finds out why Tony was so glad to see him.  

Apparently, at eight o’clock on the day Bucky’s Heat started, _ US People _ had spotted Pepper moving into an exclusive condominium not far from Avengers Tower.  By the time Steve had gotten upstairs, everyone with an internet connection had known that she and Tony had broken up.

  
  



	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank yous to Valmasy and Buhfly for beta-ing!

The worst part is, the breakup isn't anybody else’s business, but Steve is absolutely not allowed to say that.  Darcy has flat forbidden it, for one thing, but also Tony himself wouldn’t thank him.  Sitting and watching as the media makes a circus out of it, as they jump all over Tony’s character trying to assign blame— and every one of them seems to agree that it was Tony’s fault, despite none of them having any details to base this conclusion on— it’s...  

Well.

Steve spends a lot of time with the punching bags, both the literal—after three years of use by a supersoldier, the Tower gym is full of very hardy equipment— and the more metaphorical.

 

* * *

 

“Tony?” 

“Uh-huh?”

“You getting close to done?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Only you said that half an hour ago.”

“Okay.”

“Any chance I can get a time estimate, here?”

“Uh-huh.”

He doesn’t actually  _ provide  _ the time estimate, though, even when Steve waits about five minutes.  Finally, he sighs, and steps around Tony to put himself between Tony and his work.

“What—  _ hey!” _

_ “Tony.”   _

“What?!”

“Is this critical work that needs to be finished tonight?”

It isn’t.  Steve knows what Tony’s working on, has been making a point of asking about his various projects.  He’s even gotten better at reading the schematics, although Tony works on a level complicated enough that it still provides a challenge; this, here, is the design for an all-purpose spy device, one a lot like a modern phone:  GPS, mic, and camera, along with a few other features, including a taser.  Unlike a cell phone, though, the spyder (Steve’s name for it, not Tony’s) will have a body no larger than a half-inch in diameter.  The miniaturization provides the challenge, and so it’s Tony’s “come back to it when I need a distraction” problem.  

Steve still waits for Tony to admit he can be interrupted, though; the consent is important.  He watches Tony’s face as he thinks about the question, decides how he wants to answer.  He can see Tony’s eyes flicking towards his own face, obviously anticipating an unpleasant conversation ensuing should he tell the truth, but in fact that’s not what Steve is here for.  

When Tony finally admits that no, the work is far from urgent, Steve nods, instructs FRIDAY to save the work, and simply picks Tony up and carries him out.

It’s a little awkward, but he knows it makes Tony happy.

 

* * *

 

“I’m sorry,” he says much later, when they’re both naked and slightly sticky with sweat.  “About Pepper, I mean.”

Tony shrugs one shoulder.  He doesn’t like the conversation, but he’s not freaked out about it the way he had been earlier.  Slowly,  _ slowly, _ Steve is learning that if he wants to reassure Tony that everything’s fine, a large quantity of astonishingly good sex is a great way to start.  

Steve smiles to himself.

A  _ very  _ large quantity.  Shutting Tony’s brain off isn’t always easy, but it  _ is  _ always a pleasure... and it comes with some great visuals.

“It’s her right,” Tony says now.  And then he shows his own growth: he takes the comfort Steve is offering, moving in even closer, resting his head on Steve’s pec.  

It’s a new thing, for them, being able to be vulnerable, being able to reach out when they feel hurt, or worried, or tired.  For a very long time, Tony has operated under the assumption that needing other people would only make him weak; it’s only recently that he’s finally,  _ finally  _ learning otherwise, and Steve is so proud of him every time he does it, even as he struggles with the same issue, himself.

_ I should probably tell him that, someday. _

Steve rubs his fingers in Tony’s hair, scratching his scalp comfortingly.  

“She wanted things I couldn’t provide,” Tony says quietly.  “That’s not... That’s not her fault.”

“Hmm.” The noise is neither agreement nor disagreement.  “I didn’t say it was.”

Tony snorts.  “I’m assuming you have some bias, here.”  He rubs his hand down Steve’s abs— glistening with tiny droplets of moisture in the dim light from the window— in demonstration.  

Then a thought hits him.

“Can I ask you— well.  I’ll ask.  You don’t have to answer.”

_ Thanks,  _ Steve thinks sarcastically, but doesn’t say aloud because Tony has, after all, had a very bad week.

“I just— why didn’t you sleep with her?  I know you didn’t.  And I know she— well, maybe not  _ wanted  _ to.  A  _ little  _ wanted to, maybe; more  _ expected  _ it?”  Tony taps his fingers on Steve’s chest.  “We both thought it was part of the deal, when we brought you in.”

Steve thinks about it, then shrugs away the itch that develops between his shoulder blades.  “Just never felt right,” he says honestly.

Tony goes still, thinking hard, and then relaxes, putting his head back down and subsiding into thoughtful quiet.

 

* * *

 

Rhodey turns out to be more than happy to go out for dinner.  Steve has a moment of panic, picking out something to wear that doesn’t make it look like a date before settling on a polo shirt and dark jeans— just casual enough that they can go to a good steakhouse, but “date” still isn’t going to be anybody’s first thought.  There’s a nice place not too far from the Tower, and they head there, arriving within five minutes of each other and fifteen minutes early because both of them are fundamentally punctual people.  

“It’s a fucking mess,” Rhodey says over beer and steamers and spinach dip.  “Pep’s not  _ wrong,  _ Steve.”

“I know that.”

“It’s dangerous, what we do.”

“It is.”

“But leaving Tony...”

Steve sighs.  “It’s the best thing she could do,” he points out.  “It just hurts like hell.”

Rhodey looks uncomfortable, and Steve identifies it as progress that he knows why:  This is Rhodey’s  _ my friend is hurting  _ face.  

Steve recognizes it, because he’s worn the same look when it came to Bucky.

He changes the topic.  “Any progress on our mysterious political player?”

“Some,” Rhodey says, accepting the distraction with grace.  “He’s powerful, whoever he is— we’re talking presidential levels, here.  He’s got a bunch of changes being made at very high levels; subtle things, nothing that’s going to raise a flag on its own, not for the most part, but stuff that people without that highest level of connection just can’t manage.”

“So someone like the head of the CIA would be in, but not a single agent acting alone,” Steve summarizes.  It matches what he’d known already, but it is nice to have confirmation.  Steve’s always been a fan of knowing who he was fighting.

“Your philanthropy stuff is helping a lot— more than I’d thought it would, to be honest,” Rhodey says.  “It’s hard to point fingers at a guy who’s literally always out saving people.  And I’d like to take a turn at that, too, if possible; I’m still technically under command by the President, but if FEMA calls for help, I’d like War Machine to be the first one tapped.”

“Done,” Steve agrees instantly.  “Talk to Hill, but I’ll sign off on that, definitely.”  He taps his fingers on the table thoughtfully.  “There’s something that’s been nagging me about this...”

Rhodey raises his eyebrows inquiringly, but Steve has to shake his head.  

“Ah, I can’t put my finger on it.  But I want you and Sam in the public’s eye a bit more, as we can.  I also want Nat and Wanda more visible, especially Nat in a leadership role.”  He meets Rhodey’s eyes, and Rhodey nods back, understanding, and quietly alarmed.  Steve watches him add up the names Steve has just rattled off, working the problem out like it’s basic math, and comes to what is essentially the correct conclusion:  “You think it’s HYDRA.”

“Yeah.  Well, no.  Sort of, I guess.  I think it’s HYDRA  _ influenced,”  _ Steve corrects.  “Not 100% on it being completely HYDRA, but...”

Two caesar salads appear in front of their noses, and they both look up, startled.  The young Omega server lifts a grinder apologetically.  “We all good here?” 

“No pepper,” Steve tells him, then almost laughs, but Rhodey waves him on silently.  

The Omega bites his lip as he grinds and the steel ring over his left eye glints as his eyebrows worry inward.  “We’re not all going to be murdered by Nazis, are we?” he asks, seemingly against his own better judgement.

Steve and Rhodey exchange a glance which is both grim and wryly self-mocking.

Steve addresses the Omega directly and answers, “Well, son, we’re going to try real hard to keep that from happening.”  

Steve watches the young man turn brilliantly red before ducking his head and retreating, and, by mutual, unspoken agreement, he and Rhodey turn the discussion away from business for the rest of the night.

 

* * *

 

It works far,  _ far  _ more quickly than it reasonably should have, in part because they were watching for movement on a level of detail Hill and Tony both agree is unprecedented.  FRIDAY is the one who catches it, a series of angry message posts on a board which caters to the “alt-right” — but the userid is an obscure reference to HYDRA, the content of the messages seems particularly targeted at Sam, and the IP address of the poster, when FRIDAY tries to check it, turns out to have bopped around five different countries on six continents— Russia gets hit twice— before getting lost on a mobile device that turns out to have been abandoned in a dumpster outside Disney World.

They comb the park surveillance, just in case, and Clint and Nat practically jump on top of each other volunteering to go undercover as Disney Princesses (Rapunzel and Snow White, respectively).  Their disappointment when they learn that the phone was dumped at a trashcan  _ outside  _ the gate is both loud and sulky, overplayed but immensely cheering in its ridiculousness.

“Wait, play that back,” Steve says, leaning forward.  He, Tony, and Sam are teleconferencing in from the Tower; the surveillance footage of the cell-phone drop, including tracking the figure in from the parking lot, is playing on the large projector screen in front of Tony’s couch.  There are multiple mini pastries, packs of skittles and raisinets, and an enormous bowl of popcorn being passed back and forth.  It’s probably Steve’s favorite way to fight evil, if he’s honest.

On the video, the time elapsed number drops abruptly, and the hoodie-clad figure is back near the gate.  He turns slightly to the left as he passes out of the park entryway, his eye caught by something they don’t have in view, and Steve barks, “Pause it!”

FRIDAY pauses the playback, and suddenly Steve is staring at the heavily-scarred face of Brock Rumlow.

“Natasha...”

“I see it.”  Even over the speakerphone, she sounds intent and alarmingly excited about the possibility.  

“No way,” Sam says, “That asshole was behind me the whole way out of the Triskelion, and the entire damn floor collapsed!  No damn way he got out; I don’t buy it.”

“He’s been reported dead on missions before,” Natasha says grimly.  

“Are you  _ serious?” _

“There was—”  Steve has to stop and clear his throat, feeling haunted as he stares at the face several times larger than life on the screen.  “There was a running joke about it, actually.  Among the STRIKE team members.”

A beat of silence passes before Sam says, “Shit.”  

“Steve,” Natasha demands, her voice dark.  “Let me.”  

Steve imagines the fire burning in her eyes, and shivers; Tony squeezes the arm wrapped around his waist.  

“Facial recognition is failing,” FRIDAY objects, sounding confused, poor dear.

“The burns,” Tony tells her, explaining why she can’t tell who it is.  “We’ll give you a toolkit for that, I’ll upload it tomorrow, sorry.”

“In the meantime, I don’t want anybody going against him alone.  Not even you, Nat,” Steve says.  His stomach churns, and he is abruptly uninterested in either the popcorn or the goobers.  “He’s slipped our grasp too many times.  FRIDAY, can you track him?”

“Negative, Captain.  He fell out of sight of cameras not long after that; no receipts, credit card purchases, toll booths, ATM cameras—”

“That’s enough,” Tony cuts her off.

Steve taps his fingers on the top of his thigh, thinking.  He almost doesn’t notice when Wanda starts to ask a question on the other end of the line, and Maria shushes her, telling her to give him a minute.  “He’s done this before,” she says, sotto voce.

The thing is, he can’t understand why Rumlow would do this.  Not the HYDRA part— that’s reprehensible, but Steve has become familiar enough with that pattern of behavior that it no longer puzzles him, only disappoints.  But the part where Rumlow broke cover to post on a message board?  What was that about?  Rumlow’s too smart for that, and for a minute, Steve thinks it might actually be a trap— could he have known they would find his post? Did he anticipate them tracking the signal back?  Is Disneyland a gigantic, mouse-themed trap?  

But no.  FRIDAY’s capabilities are largely disguised, and she’s been devoting an improbable amount of resources to the message boards; she’s found only one message that leads to Rumlow, but there were  _ thousands  _ that pinged her keyword alerts, and over a hundred of those had bounced their IP addresses when she tried to track them down.  This is a needle-in-a-haystack level of detail, and Rumlow can’t have known they have the resources to do this kind of search.

So why post, then?  The message which had alarmed FRIDAY itself— Steve reads it again on his tablet— seems like a threat, specifically against Sam and Steve; it’s vague but violent.  But a message like this one isn’t going to convince any of the other people on the board of anything, because either they already hate the Avengers, or they aren’t going to change their minds in the face of threats.  So  _ why...? _

“I don’t think it means anything,” he concludes reluctantly.  “The post, I mean.  I’m pretty sure he was just doing this to let off steam.”

“Man drives out to Disneyland to dump a phone after an online dispute, that’s an awful lot of effort he’s putting in,” Clint disagrees.

“Yeah, that’s why I said letting off steam.  Like a train.” 

There’s a brief silence, and then Tony gets it first.  “The steam was driving something else before now.”  

Natasha’s face, showing in a little facetime-esque window to the side of the display, blanks in surprise.  Sam, beside him, says, “Huh.”

“He’s focused on something,” Steve says, “focused so hard that this is the only time he has for fun.  Let’s find out what the ‘something’ is, hm?”

Maria and Nat have separate little view screens on the interface with Steve, but he’s pretty sure they’re actually sitting next to each other, and that they just exchanged a significant look.  “On it,” Nat says, her voice even.  

“That was the last of the data for tonight,” Hill adds.  “You boys have big plans?”

“I am  _ making  _ big plans,” Sam says, and he has his phone out already, texting fast. 

“This the hot nurse?” Tony asks.

“You’re joking and you should not because, in fact, it is the hot nurse.”  Sam’s phone chimes in his hand; he grins, gap-toothed and happy.   _ “And  _ we are meeting at a bar in half an hour!  Now,  _ excuse  _ me, but I have to get changed.”

“Have fun,” Nat calls, and Sam’s smile changes a little, meaning something slightly more intimate as he waves himself out.  Steve remembers when he thought she and Sam might have been sleeping together; watching them now, he’s still not sure he was wrong.  “Steve, Tony, I’ll see you the next time you’re up here.”

“Night, Romanov; Avengers.  FRIDAY, end call.”

The room is dark in the absence of the holoscreen, and quiet, too high and well-soundproofed for Steve to hear anything but the wind going by outside the window.

“So,” Tony says, “Work’s done, we have the place to ourselves, and the rest of the night free.”  He raises an eyebrow, smirking and digging his sock-clad toe into Steve’s thigh.  “Whatever are we going to do with ourselves.”

Steve drops his hand to the foot, pulling it into his lap and digging both thumbs into the arch.  “Oh...” he says, “I’m sure we’ll think of something...”

 

* * *

 

The days pass, and they don’t find another lead on Rumlow.  

Tony updates FRIDAY’s facial recognition software, and Vision and Maria sift through all their data again, and Natasha goes silent and deadly and disappears for disturbing windows of time, but nothing helps.  Rumlow is a ghost once more.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo, things get a bit steamier in this chapter! I'd still call it M and not E, but it's the E side of M. With D/s a palpable presence. Take care of yourselves.
> 
> Also, hurray! This chapter we finally *move the fucking plot* along! 
> 
> Thanks to Valmasy and Buhfly for betas and encouragements. Can I just say how wonderful those two are? They *are*.

The next month, Bucky refuses to allow Steve in during his Heat.

He tells him in person, one week before the event; Steve can comfort himself with that much, at least.  He asks Sam to be in the room, which Sam does, although he’s surprisingly quiet during the discussion.  Steve keeps looking over and expecting Sam to jump in, but he just keeps his own counsel, not saying a word.  

“Can I ask why?” Steve asks, but Bucky doesn’t say anything. He just looks at Steve like he’s just asked why Bucky wasn’t a jockey or something, some totally nonsensical question which subtly implied that Bucky was in the wrong.  Which he  _ isn’t;  _ Bucky has the right to choose who joins his Heats every time, and Steve  _ knows  _ that.  

This  _ is  _ a change, though.  

Steve would like to know what he  _ himself _ did wrong.

But Bucky isn’t talking, so he doesn’t ask.  He can only watch as, for the next week, FRIDAY takes delivery of package after package containing a veritable smorgasbord of sex toys.  When the time comes, she blocks the main elevator from letting out on Bucky’s floor so that neither Steve nor anyone else can accidentally surprise him.  Steve drops in before she does it, making sure that Bucky is warm and safe, and that he has the special hormone lube which helps the Heats go more smoothly according to all the doctors he and Tony had consulted.  (Not together; they had each done it, individually, without telling the other that they were planning to do so.)

Bucky smiles tensely, and tells Steve that he’s sure that he’ll be fine, that he’s done them alone before, and it didn’t kill him.  That he wishes Steve could be there, and when Steve says, “I  _ can,”  _ he shakes his head at him sadly, but also warily.

“No,” he says firmly.  “You can’t.”

Steve presses his lips together and looks out the window.

“Don’t worry.”

Steve looks back over.  Bucky’s sitting on the edge of the bed, hunched over with his elbows on his knees.  His head and neck are forward as if he were letting them slump, but his head is also tilted up to look at Steve from under his lashes.  It’s a move Steve associates with Bucky’s Heats—he always gets more deliberate with his posture when he’s getting close, Steve has noticed.  

“Don’t worry,” Bucky repeats—bizarrely, he’s the one comforting  _ Steve,  _ now.  “It won’t last long,” he promises. “They never do.”

Steve smiles, and nods.  Bucky’s right that he usually goes short—from what Steve has seen, his Heats are usually only about a day.

 

* * *

 

It takes  _ three. _

 

* * *

 

The first day, Steve tries to distract himself with work.  It isn’t particularly successful; he’s absent minded and angry, and the two make for a bad enough combination that both Darcy and, preemptively, Maria Hill, ban him from appearing in public in any capacity.  

So after that, on the second day, he tries to paint, and that at least goes well—the old familiar image of the performing monkey, but painted into shattered pieces of a broken goblet so that the monkey appears to be breaking apart.  He contacts Pepper via the Eve Madison email, saying that he has a commission to sell, and does she happen to know of anyone who would be buying?  

As peace offerings go, it’s lukewarm, but it is, at least, better than nothing, and if Pepper  _ isn’t  _ interested then at least he’ll have a lead on how to how to sell the damned thing.  He sure as hell doesn’t want to  _ look  _ at it!

Pepper doesn’t respond to his email, but apparently she contacts Tony, because on the third day, he gets called to the penthouse.  

 

* * *

 

Tony looks up as Steve walks in, and even if he hadn’t, Steve would probably still have stopped two feet inside the door.  

For one thing, there’s the matter of Tony’s  _ clothes. _

Steve doesn’t know  _ what  _ to call this outfit, but dear God, he knows he wants to see it again.  There’s some kind of robe—silk, it looks like, given the matte richness of it, and an absolutely delicious garnet shade—over everything else.  Under that, Tony appears to be wearing pajama pants, rich but comfortable, satin maybe?  They’re bias cut and wide-legged, and they cling to his hips like their grip on him is the only thing keeping the pants up, which it probably  _ is,  _ because he’s sure as hell not wearing any underwear _. _

He’s barefoot—Steve’s mouth waters—and he’s not wearing a shirt, but—oh, God, Steve’s already getting hard just  _ looking  _ at it—he’s wearing the gauntlet, with the hydraulics crossing his chest so that Steve knows it’ll be at full power.  

Steve knows what he’s looking at.  He  _ knows.   _

This is a Tony who’s ready to push Steve around.  

A sort of excited keening noise emerges from Steve’s mouth, almost without his volition, and he finds himself on his knees.  His face feels—oh God, Steve is sure his face is doing something  _ awful— _ he’s looking up at Tony and he’s sure he looks like a puppy, a golden retriever or something, who has just seen its human after a long time apart.  Maybe as much as a whole  _ day!  _ he thinks sarcastically, but then he stops thinking, because his mind is making an excited, high-pitched “Eeeeee!” noise, and everything else starts to fade away.

Tony starts to say something, starts to tilt his head and ask a question—

_ “Please,”  _ Steve blurts.

Tony freezes, and then laughs.  “Okay, then,” he says.  His eyes are kind, but he is definitely laughing at Steve, and Steve feels it like a spark in his stomach.  “I guess that answers that.  Get over here, would you?”

Oh, damn.  Walking.  That will require functioning leg muscles, won’t it?

Steve starts to rise for it, but Tony stops him.  “Ah,” he says.  “No.  I didn’t tell you to stand.”

Goosebumps break out all over Steve’s chest and arms, and he realizes with a start that he’s already breathing roughly.  

_ Tony,  _ his mind chants.   _ Tony Tony Tony Tony To— _

He eyes the distance between him and Tony, considers knee-walking over it...

...and then, slowly, drops to all fours.

He doesn’t look away from Tony as he crawls, keeps his gaze locked on his face.  It’s amazing, the parade of expressions that pass there:  incredulity, delight, desire, greed, mischief, love, love,  _ love... _

By the time he stops in front of Tony, Tony looks almost wrecked, his dark eyes wide and full of emotion, his hands tender even with the gauntlets as he rests one in Steve’s hair.  Steve pushes into it instinctively.  “Good boy,” Tony says, and his voice is hoarse.

Steve pushes a little harder, and the gauntlet whines softly as Tony holds him in place.

“Don’t make me take it back,” Tony warns him, voice soft, amused, fond.

Steve shudders all over, head pulling back a little to show his throat.

“Oh, wow.  Look at you.  That’s amazing, Steve.  God, you’re so beautiful.”

_ “Tony,”  _ Steve gasps, shaking again.  Oh, God, where is this coming from?  Tony  _ never  _ does this kind of thing, it’s not his—

—but he’s doing it now, by God, is he ever, and it’s amazing, it’s wonderful, it’s—

— _ It’s for me,  _ he realizes, as Tony fits the other hand over his face, armored thumb dragging at his lower lip.  Tony’s doing this  _ for Steve,  _ because he was  _ worried  _ about Steve, because  _ Steve  _ is worried about  _ Bucky,  _ and that’s—

—God, has anybody ever loved him this much?

“Okay,” Tony says gently, “Okay.  Let’s get your clothes off, hmm?”

Steve hurries so badly to take his shirt off that he rips it in two.  Tony laughs at him again, but it’s a good laugh, kind and gentle, and when he’s done, Tony slips his pajama bottoms down and draws Steve’s head in, and Steve  _ lunges  _ for it.  He probably looks ridiculous, but he doesn’t even  _ care.   _ He just surges forward, eager, adoring, and Tony lets him, even puts one armored hand at the back of Steve’s neck to encourage him.

He pulls him off too soon, in Steve’s opinion; not enough time, not enough  _ joy  _ spent with his nose grinding into Tony’s pubes, swallowing and swallowing around him.  He whines in disappointment as his mouth leaves the wide smoothness of the head, and sits back on his heels.  

“I know,” Tony comforts him.  “I know, Steve.  But we’re not anywhere  _ close  _ to done here, and I want to be able to chime in at the end of this.  I’ve got a four-hour block free, babe, and I plan to use  _ every minute of it  _ to drive you as completely insane as possible.  Okay?  Give me your hands.”

Unhesitatingly, Steve does.

Tony picks up a cuff from where it had been sitting, not hidden so much as just out of Steve’s line of sight, on the table, on the far side of Tony’s legs.  “Adamantium,” Tony says.  “I ended up just machining them, it’s easier.  Want it?”

Steve nods so fast he practically looks like a bobble-head.

“Yeah,” Tony says lowly, eyes crinkling, “I bet you do.  Okay, here we go.”  

He closes the cuff around Steve’s wrist, then does the other one.  A push of a button and the two cuffs clamp together—magnetic, like the retractor Tony made for his shield.  

“Try ‘em,” Tony urges.

Steve tries.  He could pull them apart if he really wanted to put the effort in, he discovers, but as soon as he stops trying, they snap back together again.

“Nice.  Okay, now—”  He touches the button again, and Steve’s wrists fall apart again.  “—Now, I have some ideas.  Let’s start with you jerking off here—just on your knees, like that, that’s fine—and then I think I’m going to scoop up the jizz and you’re going to suck it off my fingers, and then we can go upstairs.  How’s that sound?”

It’s a rhetorical question, it’s  _ gotta  _ be, but Steve answers it anyway.   _ “Please,  _ Tony.  God, please,  _ please  _ let me— _!” _

“Yeah, okay.  That’s what I thought.  Here we go, then...”

Tony gives Steve’s hands a little push towards himself, then pulls his hands away entirely, leaning back on the gauntlets and watching as Steve sets to work.

 

* * *

 

Tony takes his time.  He takes  _ hours,  _ shoving Steve around, turning him on, teasing him, and all the while opening him up, slowly, slowly, with progressively wider toys until he’s used to the stretch.  Steve has no idea how long Tony’s been preparing for this—the cuffs alone have to have taken at least a week, because adamantium sourcing is controlled by the government—but he has clearly done  _ extensive  _ research.  With Tony, it’s always hard to tell how much is scripted and how much is off the top of his head, but if Steve had to guess he would say that at least half of their interaction is planned ahead of time.

It’s a good reminder.  Tony isn’t  _ just  _ into things that make him feel like an Omega again; he’s  _ also  _ into things that make  _ Steve  _ feel good.

 

* * *

 

They’re relaxing in the hot tub afterwards—there are a lot of bubbles, mostly smelling like lemon, and Steve feels  _ ridiculously  _ relaxed and goofy—when FRIDAY dings them.  “Pardon me, boss, but Captain Rogers did ask to be notified when Barnes’ Heat was up.”

Steve tenses—or tries to, anyway.  

Hard to get too tense when you’re that fucked out, and relaxing in your boyfriend’s arms in a hot tub.

“Thanks, FRIDAY,” Tony says, watching the side of Steve’s face and tightening his arms around him, brushing fingers over sore and now overly-sensitive nipples.  “Let us know when he’s up for a visit, would you?”

“Sure thing, boss.”

The speaker clicks when it turns off, a mannerism FRIDAY had adopted for Steve at Steve’s request.  Tony, of course, has noticed, but seems to have chosen not to say anything.

It takes a couple hours, during which Bucky is presumably cleaning up and getting dressed.  By that time, Steve and Tony have also eaten and dressed, both of them in comfortable jeans and t-shirts.  “Alright,” Steve says to FRIDAY when she clicks off, then turns to Tony, feeling tired.  “I’ll see you later, I guess.”

“Nope.” 

Tony tosses the wrapper from the truffle he was nibbling in the trash, a perfect overhand shot that whooshes without touching the sides of the can.  

Steve frowns as Tony proceeds to get up and walk to the elevator.  

“No?”

“Nope.  I’m coming with you.”  Tony points at the doors opening behind him.  “You coming?”

“Pretty sure I’ve done plenty of that, already,” Steve murmurs, and steps onto the elevator behind him.

 

* * *

 

Tony deliberately waves him out of the elevator ahead of him, then gooses him on the way down to Bucky’s rooms.  Steve, still flying from that afternoon, just smiles and plots revenge. 

_ Possibly something involving... ribbon,  _ he decides as they step out together into the hallway.

Bucky’s awake and waiting in the rocking chair, a thermos sitting on the nightstand, on top of the pile of notebooks and dictionaries that habitually lived there.  He looks expectant when Steve enters; he looks surprised when Tony follows him.

And then guilty.  For the first time, Steve wonders if there’s something he’s missed here.

“Hey, Bucky.”  He wants to touch Bucky as he comes into the room, but it’s not usually something Bucky wants from him, and especially not the day or two after a Heat, so he doesn’t.  He just smiles at him, and sits on the bed, and waits to see what Tony’s going to do.

“Barnes,” Tony greets him, then holds out a hand once he has passed Bucky’s rocking chair enough to be face to face with him.  Bucky transfers his coffee to the left hand, goes to shake with his right; Tony twists his wrist at the last minute, smearing his wrist all along the inside of Bucky’s forearm.

A complicated series of expressions chase across Bucky’s face, and, wide-eyed, he lifts the arm to his nose and sniffs it like he’s just been sprayed with perfume.  In a way, he has, although it’s nothing that should have a  _ scent,  _ per se:  the wrists are one of the excretion points for pheromones, and—having just spent most of the day dominating the  _ hell  _ out of Steve—Tony should be soaking in them.  

Bucky sniffs, and his eyes go even wider before he hurriedly shifts the cup again and drinks deep.

“Why,” he asks, when he’s lowered his cup again, “are you here?”

His eyes dart from Tony to Steve, but, even with the last week, Steve can’t quite believe he’s asking both of them.  

Can’t.  Won’t.  

One of those.

“Well...”  Tony sits on the bed next to Steve, but unlike Steve, who is cross-legged and comfortable, Tony  _ lounges.   _ “...Steve is here because he adores you and he’s worried about you.”

Steve blushes, but doesn’t bother arguing.  As summaries go, it’s a pretty accurate one.

_ “I  _ am here, on the other hand, because I adore  _ him.”   _ Tony smiles, but his eyes are sharp.  “And because I’m worried about him.”

Bucky drinks his coffee.  “Steve’s a big boy,” he says into the cup.  “He can take care of himself.”

“Yeah, not what I mean, thanks.”  

Tony isn’t smiling any more.

It would be easy, Steve sometimes thinks, to forget that Tony’s an Alpha.  Tony likes letting other people take charge; he likes stepping back and not making a fuss.  He doesn’t  _ do it,  _ all the time, but that’s because Tony  _ also  _ likes things to be as good as they possibly can be—especially when lives are on the line, which they often are in their line of work—and he doesn’t trust others to get them that way.  Which is fine; it’s even reasonable, considering the scope of Tony’s abilities.  But Tony, in life much as in bed, does not fundamentally need to be calling the shots.  It’s only when you’re calling the shots  _ stupidly _ that you see him as an Alpha.

Which does imply that Bucky is in some way being stupid, because Tony sure as hell looks like an Alpha right now.

“Steve  _ is  _ a big boy, you’re right,” Tony agrees, “And he has an awful lot of responsibilities, too.  Don’t you, Steve?”

“Uh...  Yes?” Steve says, because it’s true, but also because he’s not sure where Tony is going with this and he isn’t willing to sacrifice Bucky for Tony any more than he would the other way around.  

“Yes, he does,” Tony says immediately, never looking away from Bucky.  “And he hasn’t been able to perform them this week, because he’s been too busy worrying about you.”

Okay,  _ now  _ Steve knows where this is going.  “Bucky has a right to choose who shares his Heats, Tony.”  

Two pairs of eyes size him up, consider his opinion, and then dismiss him in favor of each other again.  

“You can choose who you fuck, whether it’s Steve, or Natasha, or a toy, or whoever.  Hell, I’ll even help—and I know you know that.”  

Bucky blinks.  Steve isn't sure why he looks surprised, exactly because yes, they do  all  know that.  

It wasn’t  _ Steve  _ who picked out the majority of the toys Bucky received in the last week.  

“But the  _ way you did it...   _ You can’t stop with a simple  _ no,  _ with Steve.  He’ll respect it, but he won’t understand it.”  Tony is speaking an uncomfortable level of truth, Steve thinks, his heart pounding in his throat, his breath rasping rapidly past his lips.  “You have to tell him  _ why.   _ And if you can’t say why?  If you can’t articulate it, or you’re just too fucking  _ embarrassed?   _ Then that’s  _ your problem,  _ and you had better fucking  _ fix it.  Fast.   _ Because we are not doing this again next month, Barnes.”  

And then, suddenly, Tony changes again, leaning back on his elbows and smiling lazily.  “I’m old,” he joked, “and my heart can’t take it.  Hell, he’s been your boyfriend longer than he has mine, Barnes;  _ you  _ know how to fix this.”

Bucky’s gaze doesn’t sharpen, because it was already razor-like, but his jaw tightens abruptly, and he leans across himself to slam the coffee cup back on the nightstand.  “Do I?” he snarls at Tony, as if he had just been poked with something sharp and unexpected, like a knitting needle.  “Has he?  You real sure, Stark?”  

Something in Tony’s words has apparently hit the nail on the head; this, Steve is certain, is approaching the real issue.  

“What do you mean?” Steve asks, leaning forward over his crossed legs.  He makes sure to keep his voice soft, his expression neutral.  Bucky’s upset, and Tony’s going to be putting out Fight in the next minute unless someone calms this down; it’s not Steve’s usual role—definitely not one that comes easily to him—but since he’s the only one able to take it...  Despite his exterior being calm, though, Steve’s insides are a jumble.  His heart is pounding, and his mouth is bone dry, and all because Tony’s right:  Steve  _ does  _ want to know why.

Bucky’s eyes snap over him, studying his face.  “When Potts was around...” he said slowly, “it was different.  ‘Cause she kinda seemed like maybe she didn’t want anybody knowing she had competition.  But now...”

Tony has gone blank and watchful, and Steve can feel a frown building between his own brows.  Without even looking at each other, he knows the two of them are thinking the same thing:   _ What does Bucky mean?   _

“It’s different,” Bucky says again.  “You don’t have anybody to protect except yourselves, now, and the Steve I know never did that—protect himself, I mean.”

Steve shakes his head slowly, keeps his voice steady despite the pulsing lump in his throat.  “What’re you talking about, Buck?”

Bucky flips him an impatient look.  “I mean...”  He glances back and forth between the two of them, like he can’t believe neither one of them has cottoned on yet.  “... why haven’t you  _ told  _ anyone?  It’s not like you.”  

The room is dead silent.

Bucky presses back into his wicker chair, and shrugs his shoulders so his shirt scrapes against the twigs.  He’s twitchy, eyes darting from side to side, and his usual control over his posture is gone:  he’s hunching up, curling in on himself, defensive.  “It’s not like you,” he repeated.  “And you being  _ you  _ is the only reason I can...”  

He trails off, face twitching, not meeting Steve’s eyes.

“I don’t trust it, is all.  And it’s enough that I...”

“We get it,” Tony cuts him off.  He turns to look at Steve, who feels as if he’s just been socked in the gut.  “Well, it’s an answer,” he offers.  With his face turned away from Bucky, Tony grimaces.

Then he hops off the bed.

“Thanks, MC.”  He drops a friendly hand against the back of Bucky’s chair and rocks it before making for the door.  “Steve, I’ll see you when you make it upstairs.”

And then he’s heading  out, leaving Steve to talk to Bucky alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS CHAPTER NOW HAS ART!!! Oh my gosh, and so PRETTY!!! *happy pterodactyl noises* Art is by the fabulous One-And-Five-Nines, is VERY NSFW, and can be found [here: https://chibisquirt.tumblr.com/post/161796711717/chibisquirt-banshee-shrieking-oh-my-god-look](https://chibisquirt.tumblr.com/post/161796711717/chibisquirt-banshee-shrieking-oh-my-god-look) .


	19. Chapter 19

 

“Bucky,” Steve says, his chest feeling hollow, “I’m so sorry.  I didn’t even  _ think—” _

But he stops, because that isn’t exactly true.

The truth is, Steve  _ has  _ thought about it—about coming out as pan, and about being a couple with Tony, in public.  He has even, after swearing him to secrecy, asked Darcy about it, about when they could do it, about what the right timing might be so that it didn’t look like a fling or some kind of payback against Pepper.  Darcy said that he could come out himself, but he would have to pretend not to be dating Tony for at least six months, that he would even be better off if he could find someone to casually date in the meantime, preferably a woman, but failing that an Omega.  

That led to Steve thinking about a  _ lot  _ of things.

He has thought about asking Bucky to be his Omega; of course he has.  He thought about it especially after Pepper left, because then—but that was putting the cart not only before the horse, but before the cargo, too.  And anyway, Bucky has made it clear that ninety percent of the time, he isn’t interested in being Steve’s Omega.  He isn’t interested in being Steve’s  _ anything, _ except for Steve’s friend.

But still.  

The thought has occurred.  

“There’s also—”  Steve continues the thought out loud, even though it’s not going to make much sense.  “It’s not just  _ me  _ who would be affected by that.  I talked to Darcy—”

“Who?”

“PR manager for the Avengers.  And he says—”

“Why the fuck is it about the Avengers?”

Steve blinks.  “It’s always about the Avengers,” he says, uncertain.  “Or at least, with Tony and I, it has to be.  I can’t just come out—it’s going to be huge—without at least talking to the team and warning them I’m going to be doing it, first.”

Bucky blinks, a lot, frowning.  He doesn’t say anything, though, which means he knows Steve has a point.

“It’s not—”  Steve stops, swallowing.  “I hate this,” he says honestly.  Bucky can hear this; Bucky won’t judge him for it, or resent him, or anything.  He never has.  “I hate being the dancing monkey, I hate having to think about  _ what will the public think?”   _

He was maybe a bit more mocking just now than he needed to be.  

“I hate worrying that just being myself is going to be enough to tarnish something I care about, but— _ it might.”   _ He thinks about the way things were, the looks that used to cross people’s faces, and about all the ways that things  _ haven’t  _ changed all that much.  “It really might.  And I care about what I’m doing, now; I care about making sure the world is better, long-term.”  

He shifts his weight, then, breaking the mood, and adds, “Besides...  It’s not fair to Pepper, really.”

Bucky laughs, a harsh bark of a laugh that doesn’t really sound like humor.  “Yeah,” Buck says, “She’d have a hard time matching you.”

Steve laughs too, then, more gently than Bucky, because Pepper Potts is incomparable, and she, he, and Tony all know it.  

Then Bucky stops smiling, and glances away.  “I just,” he starts, and then stops, the phrase hanging unfinished in the air between them while the silence stretches and grows thin.

“What?” Steve asks.  He’s frowning, unconsciously, his own smile melted away.

Bucky turns his head to look at him, straight-on and blunt with it.  “I just never known you to run,” he says, his tone simple and without accusation.

Steve hears the accusation anyway.

It might, just maybe, be a fair one.

He sits back on the bed, settling and shifting into a slightly more comfortable seat.  “You may be right,” he admits, “and I’m definitely going to talk to Darcy about it again.”  

_ If you start running, they’ll never let you stop.   _ He can almost hear his mother say it.

“I’ve never been open about this,” he says slowly.  “Even when I was with you... we weren’t exactly advertising.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees.  “But I always figured that was my fault.”

Steve freezes, eyes widening.  “What?” He uncrossed his legs, shifts his weight forward to the edge of the bed; he only barely stops himself in time from grabbing Bucky’s hands.  “How the hell do you get that?!”

Bucky looks uncomfortable, shifting in the wicker chair.  “Just figured,” he mutters, looking away from Steve.  “Stood to reason, you wouldn’ta backed down from that fight yourself.”

“I did, though.”  Steve’s heart starts pounding, thumping louder and louder in his ears, and his breath is rasping in his throat.  “I always did.  I could face a beating for me, but for you—It was easier to just tell myself I was trying to switch.”  He smiles, weakly, feeling nauseous.  “I almost believed it, really.  I told everybody I did.”

Bucky watches him, blank-faced.  “You’re not that dumb,” he says.

Steve laughs, self-deprecating.  “Sometimes I feel like I am.”  He slips his fingers around his own wrist, and sure enough, his pulse is racing, out of control.

The room goes quiet, Bucky keeping silent, Steve listening to nothing but the felt-not-heard  _ thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud  _ under his fingertips.  

_ Too fast. _

He breathes, deliberately, in and out, until his pulse slows down to something more sedate.   _Too fast.  Toooo... faaaast..._

_ Thud.  Thud.  Thud. _

Better.

“I’ll talk to Darcy about it,” he repeats, and then deliberately changes the subject:  “So, read any good books, lately?”

Bucky laughs, but obligingly allows him to talk about something, _anything,_ else.

 

* * *

 

By the time Steve crawls into bed that night, all the relaxation that Tony had sparked in him has vanished.  His muscles are hard knots, all up and down his back and spine, and his head is aching low at the back where they pull against his skull.  He lies, face-down, on Tony’s enormous mattress, stretching his hands out as far as they can go on either side of him, pointing his toes down towards the base of the bed.

It feels good, stretching out like this.  His body still aches, very faintly, from the pounding Tony had given him earlier—mmm—but mostly, he’s lingering in the conversation with Bucky, in the anticipation of what he’s going to have to do.  

It’s terrifying.

He wasn’t kidding or trying to make Bucky feel better, earlier; he really has been afraid of sharing this.  He would hide it forever if he could—but of course he can’t.  It’s not in his nature, and damn Bucky, anyway, for pointing that out.

He doesn’t know how to tell  _ Tony,  _ either.

Tony never asked to come out.  He hasn’t, all this time, so Steve has to assume that it’s something Tony isn’t interested in.  People would probably say something awful about it, anyway; talk about the way Tony used to be an Omega, most likely.

Tony deserves better.

But that’s the same reasoning he  _ used  _ to use, too, and obviously that didn’t work out so well...

He almost doesn’t hear the door open—they’re all quiet in the Tower—but he hears Tony’s footsteps as he crosses the room behind Steve.  Steve doesn’t look up, doesn’t even move, just staying in his stretch, fingers extended as far as they can to the edges of the enormous bed.  Tony pauses—Steve can hear him stop moving—at the edge of the bed, presumably looking at him, and then kicks off his shoes and climbs in, crawling over Steve with one leg on each side until he can settle down, his chest pressed against Steve’s back.

He settles with a grumble, beard scratching the back of Steve’s neck.  For the first time, Steve wonders when he grew it; a beard is an unusual attribute on an Omega, and he can’t help but think Tony would have put it off as long as possible to retain the illusion that he could switch back.  On the other hand, it would have helped him be taken more seriously in the business world...

Steve’s thoughts trail away under the comforting weight of his lover, and slowly, he relaxes, going from an active stretch to a more passive pronation.  

Tony kisses the back of his neck, not moving from his position.  “So, honey... how was your day?”

Steve chuckles.  “For the most part,” he says gratefully, “it was really good.”  

Tony bites him, lightly, on the back of the neck.  It occurs to Steve that Tony might still be feeling the Alpha riling-up that comes from, well... from what they were doing all afternoon.

It would explain Tony deciding to tag Bucky with pheromones earlier, too.

“It was,” Steve insists.  “And Bucky’s point was good, too.”

Tony licks the bite thoughtfully, then rolls off of Steve to sprawl against his side.  “It was,” he admits.  “I’m not sure I’m ready, though.”

“You’re not.  Darcy said—”

“You already called Darcy?”

Steve leans over and bites Tony’s cheekbone, holding it gently in his teeth for a second before letting go and kissing it instead.  “I called Darcy three weeks ago,” he says gently, and then watches Tony’s eyes widen.  They gleam in the half-light gloom of the dark room.  

“Oh,” Tony says.  

And then stops.

Steve waits for him to work it through.  They are both like this, he knows, both he and Tony, and it’s both a strength and their weakness as a couple.  Give them a worldly problem, and they leap to conclusions, usually the right ones, always faster than anybody else around them.  But give them an emotion, and it’s...  well, it’s difficult.  They have to take a while, and put it aside first, and think about it, and then take the emotion out in small pieces and work through each one, because the whole thing would be overwhelming.

Eventually, Tony’s mouth opens.  He takes a very large breath in, and then asks, “So when are you coming out?”

“I’m not sure.”  Steve keeps his tone even, as tired and subdued as he was before, when he answers.  “Probably sometime this month.”  Timing that surely cannot come as a surprise.  “I didn’t have a deadline when I talked to Darcy before; I... kind of do, now.”

Tony lies beside him, eyes open in the darkness, and thinks.  He doesn’t say anything, though, not for a long time, and eventually, Steve finds himself drifting off into sleep, all the words remaining unsaid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got some feedback on the last chapter that Bucky's reasoning was kind of obscure, so hopefully this fixes it. If not, please feel free to tell me / suggest a better way of phrasing it. Essentially, Bucky's very wary of Alpha's in general, and the only reason he trust Steve is that Steve is STEVE. When Steve starts acting out of character-- such as by not coming out as pan, when he knows it will make a big difference to a lot of people that he does so-- it sets off alarm bells in Bucky's mind, and Bucky basically has the heebie-jeebies too much to want Steve there.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this fic.
> 
> Basically, I realized that the fic I originally wanted to write with this wasn't the kind of fic I'm interested in writing now. I'm less thoughtful, less mopey, more into actions and the results thereof. And if I were to try to keep writing this fic the way I was originally, I would burn out, and be very unhappy, which I'm not going to do for a fanfic. The options I saw were: a) abandon the fic, or b) change the story I'm writing to the kind I want to be doing now.
> 
> So I went with b. 
> 
> The upshot of this is, this story will have more sex--I just changed the rating to E to be on the safe side, although I think this chapter is on the very hard side of M--and fewer of the slow, character-building scenes like the one between Steve and Maria Hill. Some of you will like that, some of you won't; *I'm* not happy with it because I feel like it makes the story mis-matched, but it's better than abandoning it. 
> 
> Thank you all for reading, and I hope you continue to do so! --Bubbles

 

It’s cold as hell.  

Steve presses his lips together.  He isn’t convinced this is the right place to be doing this, but Darcy was insistent.  And as usual, Darcy is right about at least one thing, because the cold is making the journalists uncomfortable; it should keep things moving along.  

Steve is standing beside a marble plinth near the water in Brooklyn, and the brisk breeze coming off the ocean is sending wintry air through everyone’s coats.  The plinth itself is a memorial, and it’s not about Steve; instead, it’s about Bucky and all the other Brooklyn Boys who lost their lives in the war.  When the statue of Steve went up in Prospect Park, this one was installed here at the same time, a result of some family member kicking up a fuss.  Personally, Steve loves it:  a sign of good, old-fashioned Brooklyn uppityness, as well as being a simpler, more elegant design than the somewhat gaudy likeness of him in the park.  The Soldier’s Memorial is shaped like a simple, tapered prism; it has a flat top, with a single bronze rose on top and a bronze seagull standing next to it— the rose obviously to symbolize mourning, the seagull to symbolize how many of the local boys had gone into the Navy, rather than the Army or Air Force.  

Steve particularly likes that touch, because he knows exactly why quite a number of those boys chose the Navy:  Even back then, the Navy took Omegas.  So it’s one more twist of symbolism to do this press conference here, now.

He raises his hand for silence, and gets it, the moderately-sized swarm journalists subsiding with a small popcorning of conversation which trails off at the end.  Steve looks around at them and takes a deep breath.  

“This isn’t Avengers business,” he says.  His voice comes out calmly, belied only by the nervous swallow and the rapid thunder of his heart.  “In fact, I’m not sure it’s  _ anyone’s  _ business.  But I know that this is going to make a big difference to a lot of people, and if I can help...”  He lets his voice trail off, looking at the assembled man-eating sharks again.   _ Last chance to pull out, Rogers. _

_...Yeah, not gonna happen. _

Steve opens his mouth again and comes out to the world.

 

* * *

 

“So how was it?”  Tony passes him a hot, steaming mug— chamomile tea, not coffee; apparently, Tony is feeling nurturing.  Steve cups the mug in his hands as if he were freezing.  

“You just said you watched it on TV,” he answers.  “You tell me.”

Tony snorts softly.  He sits down next to Steve on their couch, pushing his shoulder into Steve’s affectionately.  “Not what I meant, honeybunch.”  He presses his lips to Steve’s forehead, right at the hairline.  

It feels... really, really nice.

Steve lifts his mug to his lips and blows a stream of cold air across the surface of it.  “I don’t want to talk about my feelings,” he says.  His voice comes out commanding, warning Tony off.  “I just— I want to—”  He stops talking, his shoulders hunching up near his ears.  He blows across the cup again; it’s still too hot to drink.

Tony watches him, thoughtful, fingers tapping idly.  Sometimes Steve really loves it when Tony does that; the tapping noise has become reassuring, like the fan of a computer or the idle of a car:  a noise that tells you something is happening, something is in progress, even if you can’t see it drive or run an application, it’s still working.

“Right!” Tony announces suddenly.  He sits up again, setting his cup down with a clink.  “I can’t believe I  _ missed  _ this one, honestly; you just came out, of  _ course  _ I should—”  He touches Steve’s waist, and then slides his hands lower, starting to work at the button of Steve’s trousers.  

Steve laughs, setting his tea down before he pushes Tony’s hands away.  “Hey, no— that’s— come on, Tony!”  

“What?” Tony says.  “You’ve earned it; here, let me—”

_ “No,  _ Tony—!”

“Why not?”  Tony stops what he was doing, laughing open-mouthed and breathing just a smidge heavy from wrestling with Steve.  His wrists are caught in Steve’s hands.  Tony looks down at the sight and swallows— Steve watches his adam’s apple bob with it— licking his lips before looking back up and meeting Steve’s eyes.  

His pupils are wide, wide and so dark, almost eclipsing the warm brown of them.  

Steve is taken aback.  “Really?” he asks.

Tony cracks a grin, embarrassed.  “Really,” he says.  “You just— you’re  _ so brave,  _ Steve; you  _ are,  _ and it means so much to so many people— it means a hell of a lot to  _ me.   _ What you did today...”

He sags a bit, slumping sideways into the couch back.  His wrists are still held tight, and Steve can’t quite force himself to let go yet.

Tony watches him thoughtfully.  “I was watching the broadcast, you know.  Watched you tell the world.  And I  _ expected—”   _ He breaks off with an incredulous, almost bitter laugh.  “I  _ expected  _ that it wouldn’t mean much, not to me, anyway.  You’re doing this for Barnes, not me—”

Steve opens his mouth to object, but Tony keeps going before he can get it out.

“ — and it’s a lot more accepted than it was, and anyway it’s not like  _ I  _ didn’t already know about it.”  Tony punctuates this with a waggle of his eyebrows, and Steve laughs, remembering all the different ways he has made it exquisitely clear to Tony that he’s pan.  “So it shouldn’t have mattered, but...”  He trails off, biting his lip and nodding.  “It does, Steve.  I was watching that, and...  It was like I pulled a Grinch:   _ his heart grew three sizes that day.   _ Like rainbows and bunnies, everything was just—”

Steve doesn’t say anything.

Steve barely even  _ breathes.   _

“It was just... hopeful,” Tony finishes.  Then he grins:  “So yes, actually, if you don’t mind— I  _ would  _ like to suck your dick.”

Steve swallows around the lump in his throat.  He nods.  “Please,” he says thickly.  

He squeezes Tony’s wrists, just once, before tentatively, slowly, pulling them forward across his body, until Tony is face down over his lap, held and pinned.  

“Stay,” he says.  

He presses Tony’s wrists against the couch cushions, then takes his hands off them long enough to pull down his zipper, getting himself out.  He isn’t hard yet, but it won’t take long; in the meantime, he holds himself upright with his left hand, while his right gives a tiny, infinitesimally small push against the back of Tony’s head.

Tony hums, wordless and happy, and leans forward, swallowing him down.

He blows Steve expertly, taking him down all the way to the root before pulling back and setting a steady, sustainable rhythm.  He moans and drools around Steve’s cock, and when Steve finishes, he nuzzles Steve’s thigh, his face and body relaxed but his fist tight around Steve’s knot.  

Steve leans back against the couch, his head lolling against the cushions.  “You know...” he starts out. His voice is slurred; he sounds drunk.  “...if you were trying to make me forget about my rotten day, you’ve succeeded.”  

Boy, has Tony  _ ever.   _ The whole awful press conference seems distant.  The cold of the pier, the noise of the wind and the shouted questions, have all receded; the room is close, and quiet, and warm.

“Mmm,” is Tony’s only answer, but Steve can feel the movement of beard-hair against his thigh when Tony smiles.  

After a moment, Steve offers to reciprocate, but Tony turns him down with a yawn.  “I’m fine,” he mumbles, nuzzling his head further into Steve’s lap.  “Jus’ gonna stay here for a bit...”

Eventually, he drifts off, and Steve bestirs himself to carry him up to their bedroom to sleep.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t talk to Bucky about it for most of a week.  

His initial plan is to go up the next morning, but he finds himself dragging his heels, not quite ready to hear whatever Bucky will have to say about it— and anyway, he rationalizes, Bucky’s therapy is usually in the mornings, so afternoon would be better anyway.  Right?

But then, before he can go up that afternoon, Hill calls him in, telling him to get Upstate  _ yesterday  _ because there’s been a Rumlow sighting, only for it to turn out to be a false positive on the facial recognition software.  He spends three days tracking down leads that spin out into nothing with her and the rest of the Avengers, and since he’s supposed to be laying low and letting the storm blow over on his coming out,  _ anyway,  _ they decide he can do that just as well from the Upstate HQ as he could do it from Manhattan.  Tony’s out of town on a business trip, at this point, and Steve could use the distraction.

And then, just as he’s pulling back up at the Tower on his bike, a robot attacks New York.

“This makes no damn sense,” Sam bitches over the comms fifteen minutes later as they approach the bot.  It’s a flagrant abuse of the comms, but since Wanda isn’t here to see Sam setting bad example, and the robot doesn’t appear to have ears to overhear with— it certainly isn’t responding to any of their shouted commands— Steve lets it slide.  

Besides which, Sam is right:  it  _ doesn’t  _ make any damned sense.  The Avengers may operate out of Upstate, now, but there’s still plenty of presence here in the city:  Rhodey’s here, and usually Tony, Steve and Sam; it’s only coincidence they had all been out when the robot arrived.  Rhodey’s still in Asia with the President, but Steve and Sam are arriving on scene now, and according to their comms Tony’s already on his way back from Seattle, all of which makes the decision to attack New York City a foolish and bizarre one.  Besides all that, there are still military bases in the city, oodles of hospitals to take care of casualties, plenty of city budget to repair any damage...  Oak Ridge had been a clever target; New York City was a stupid one.  

“Let’s just take it out,” Steve orders.  He feels  _ exhausted,  _ all of a sudden.  “We can complain about all that later; I don’t want collateral damage, and that gets more likely the longer it takes us to destroy this thing.”

As it turns out, though, it only takes about a minute and a half, from the time they arrive on-scene to the moment the robot is down.  Steve and Sam would have been handling it anyway— Steve’s shield was already doing plenty of damage, and the agility difference between the robot and the Falcon was ridiculous— but after an embarrassingly short time, the robot slammed sideways into a building and just exploded, showering components everywhere.  

Steve looked past where it had been to see Iron Man hovering, palm extended, head tilted to the side as he examined the wreckage.

“Well,” Tony’s mechanical voice floundered, “that was... shockingly effective.”

 

* * *

 

They gather up the various and sundry robot-bits into a series of garbage bags purchased from a nearby home improvement store, and by the time they have them all packed up the car is there to take them back to the Tower.  Tony stores the bags in his workshop, then kicks Steve out.  “I’m going to have to take these up to the HQ,” he says, batting Steve away and then belying his own action by swooping in to kiss Steve on the cheek.  “Go out, see your buddy, and then get some sleep— I know you haven’t been doing much of that.”  

He gives Steve an eyebrow, and Steve winces guiltily.  It’s not that he  _ likes  _ to stay up late, he thinks as he takes the stairs down to Bucky, it’s just that it’s... cold, without Tony there, these days.  

Somewhere along the line, Steve has gotten used to having him there.

He knocks on Bucky’s door, and gets no answer; he knocks again, and Bucky mumbles something from the other side.  When he answers the door, his eyes are half-lidded, and his hair is disheveled.  He blinks at Steve uncertainly.  

“Did I wake you up...?”  Steve feels vaguely guilty.

“Mm,” Bucky says noncommittally.  “I was havin’ a nap, yeah.  Come in.”  He steps back and Steve enters, feeling vaguely guilty even though it’s only five-thirty in the afternoon and he couldn’t possibly have known Bucky would be sleeping.

“I just—” he starts as he makes his way towards the rocker.

Bucky stops him with an old, knowing sort of look.  “Yeah,” he says.  He throws himself into bed like a puppet with the strings cut, flopping down with his face in the pillow, arms and legs spread like a parajumper.  When he speaks, his voice is muffled by the mattress:  “Sam told you, huh?”

Steve feels suddenly wrong-footed.  “Sorry?”

“‘Bout his plan for me,” Bucky clarifies, completely unhelpfully.

“No, I don’t think he did,” Steve says.  “What plan?  I was here to talk to you about— it seems awkward now—”

Bucky pops up on his elbows to look at him, his face completely blank, and Steve wonders if he actually hasn’t heard.  How much news does he get, locked in his room all the time?  Steve knows he has a tablet and an internet connection...

“I came out,” Steve says.  His heart is pounding oddly in his chest; he’s not sure why, it’s not like  _ Bucky  _ didn’t know about his preferences.  But still, his palms are clammy and his neck is prickling: there’s no getting around the plain fact that Steve’s nervous.  “I came out  _ publicly, _ held a press conference, and everything.  Everyone knows I’m— not normal, now.”

“Oh,” Bucky says uncertainly, rubbing at his eyes like there’s still sleep in them.   _ “That. _  That was a  _ week  _ ago, Steve.”

Steve stiffens, making the wicker of the chair creak under him.  “It was four days,” he says, indignant.

“Four and a  _ half,”  _ Bucky argues.  “Whatever; it’s old news, anyway.”

“Well, I’m glad it’s of no consequence to you, buddy, that makes me feel  _ great.” _

“Oh, what, it’s not like you did it  _ for  _ me,” Bucky snorted, and Steve’s breath cuts out abruptly, because  _ no,  _ actually, he  _ hadn’t. _

“You know,” Steve says after a pause, “I think you might be the only person on this planet who really truly believes I didn’t do it for someone else.”

Bucky snags a hairband off the bedside table and starts pulling back his hair.  “What,” he asks, “not even Stark?”

“Oh, Tony definitely thinks I did it for you,” Steve says.  “He’s certain of it.”

“What about Sam?”

“Sam thinks I did it for  _ Tony. _  And so does everybody else; even the people who don’t know who I’m seeing think I’m doing it for  _ whoever that is.” _

“Oh,” Bucky says, tapping his fingers on the bedsheet.  “...Huh.”

“What?”

“Nothin’.”

“Aw, Bucky, come  _ on,  _ what is it?”

“Nothing!” Bucky insists.  “I ain’ decided what I’m thinking yet, Rogers, don’t  _ push  _ at me.  Just something’ weird in that, okay?”

“Fine.”  Steve sags back into the embraces of the chair, and rocks back and forth a few times, possibly more aggressively than necessary.  Eventually, he slows and comes to a stop, though.  “So what  _ did  _ you think I was here for, then?”

Bucky shifts, looking uncomfortable.  

At this time of day, sun is down; all the light in the room is artificial, coming from the warm yellow bulb of the lamp, and the soft white of the overheads.  But Steve can still see the way it hits Bucky’s back, highlighting the round curve of his ass and the enticing dip above it.  

It’s totally improbable, at the nadir of his cycle and all, that Bucky can be putting out Heat, but Steve almost wonders if he is  _ anyway,  _ because the mood in the room has shifted so abruptly that Steve’s positive it can’t quite be natural.  And regardless, Steve can’t quite make himself look away.  When he tears his eyes away from Bucky’s rear, they fall on his lower lip, instead, red and caught between Bucky’s teeth in hesitance.  When he looks away from  _ that,  _ he sees the way tiny hairs at his neckline are trickling out, loose, from the bun.

“Bucky?” Steve asks.  He feels faint; the room is too warm, too close— despite the fact that this room is almost always a degree and half too cool for Steve’s tastes.

“Yeah,” Bucky says.  He’s not looking at Steve.  “Sam thinks I need to start... trying.  On the Alpha thing.”

It takes him a minute to parse that one, but when he does, Steve is dumbstruck.  He sits back in the chair— the wicker  _ shrieks—  _ and just stares at Bucky. __

Bucky tips his head to the side, obviously embarrassed.  “Sam says the only way out is through.  Try to make some progress, stop when it starts to go bad; try again, and maybe get a little further.”  

“Desensitization theory,” Steve says.  He’s heard about this, some.  “And you want...  _ me?!”   _

Bucky rolls his eyes.  “Wouldn’t exactly say  _ that.   _ But there ain’t anybody  _ else  _ I would trust here, so...” 

Steve blinks, rapidly.  His chest feels swollen and heavy, too big for his skin, and it aches with the swirling mix of emotions inside.   _ “Bucky.” _

Bucky’s jaw sets, and he turns his head away again.  Steve watches him for a second, flabbergasted, and then gets up, falling to his knees beside the bed.  “Is this—?” he asks, “Do you want— I can—  _ now?” _

Buck’s shoulders stiffen, but after a moment, Steve sees him dip his head in a nod.

Okay, then.  Apparently, they’re doing this now.

Steve doesn’t get up on the bed, yet.  He isn’t sure...  It just seems like maybe covering Bucky, pinning him, is a pretty bad idea, to start with.  Instead, he stays on the ground beside the bed, kneeling, and just leans forward, pressing his lips gently to the exposed column of Bucky’s neck.

 Bucky’s still stiff, uncomfortable; Steve wonders how much it took for him just to ask for this, how hard it was to even think about it.  It’s not like they haven’t been in each other’s space before, or even since Bucky came back to the Tower; they sit side-by-side all the time, and sometimes they wrestle as guys do, and then on the other end of the spectrum there’s also the Heats.  So it’s not like this is an unknown thing, but at the same time, it’s also new.  

Since the moment Bucky told him he wasn’t interested, sitting on a rock beside a frigid lake in Greenland, Steve has very carefully treated Bucky like a brother, except during the Heats.  He hasn’t made a move, hasn’t offered any innuendo...  He’s even tried not to  _ look  _ at Bucky that way, except sometimes it’s impossible not to.  Once upon a time, Steve and Bucky had kissed regularly, but once upon a time they were also two Betas, and, well... it’s different, now.

It’s different.

Bucky reacts quickly to Steve’s kiss; he goes, if anything, even stiffer than he was, all his muscles locking up, tensing as if Steve had approached with a red-hot brand instead of just his mouth.  

“It’s okay, Buck,” Steve murmurs, holding still, keeping his mouth as gentle as possible, almost chaste except that it’s on Bucky’s  _ neck.   _ “It’s okay.  I’m not even on the bed with you.”  He’s trying to be soothing.

It works, or else Bucky gets control of himself again— impossible to tell which— because Bucky melts into the blankets spread under him, pushing closer to Steve so that Steve’s lips are shoved out of the way and his teeth touch Bucky’s skin.  

“Yeah, Bucky; just like that.”  

Steve keeps his tone gentle, his pitch even.  Slowly, he opens his mouth and touches Bucky’s neck with his tongue, a soft, firm lick that starts over the corded muscle and moves up, beneath Bucky’s ear and behind it, breathing hot and uneven over the perfect shell of Bucky’s ear.  

Slowly, and very,  _ very  _ softly, he closes his teeth over it.

Bucky  _ shudders.   _ All the remaining tension in his body drops away, and he goes completely pliant under Steve’s mouth.  It’s an incredibly heady feeling; Steve’s breath catches in his throat, and he can feel his face twisting up as he licks neatly along the line where his teeth have been.  “Bucky,” he says thickly, “Buck.”  

Bucky answers nonverbally, a high-pitched whimper coming from his throat.  It doesn’t sound like a  _ no,  _ not yet, but it’s not a  _ yes,  _ either.  He sounds... lost.  But he tilts his head to the side to give Steve better access, and pushes sideways into him again, too, so Steve’s not quite sure what to do other than keep going until Bucky tells him clearly to stop.

He kisses Bucky again, in front of the ear this time, open-mouthed and hot; Bucky answers him with little whimpers, small, bitten-off noises of confusion and arousal.  Steve works his mouth backwards, taking the lobe of Bucky’s ear between his teeth and sucking on it, sucking on it, until—  

Bucky cries out roughly and shoves him away.

Steve stumbles backwards, rocked off-balance by the push:  Bucky must have been reacting instinctively, because he hadn’t controlled the strength in his arm at all.  Steve winds up falling on his ass and knocking his head against the rocker because he can’t take his eyes off Bucky long enough to recover his bearings.

Bucky doesn’t say anything.  

Neither does Steve.  

The room is still, but it feels like Bucky’s shout is still echoing around them.  Buck curls away from Steve, putting his back to him, and Steve takes it for permission to speak.  

“Think that’s probably as far as it’s going today,” he says.  His voice cracks, and his mouth feels arid; he swipes a tongue that feels swollen and thick over his lips.  “Maybe more next time.”

Bucky shudders again, his hips jerking against the bed.  They’re both hard, Steve realizes abruptly, the surprising and aching sort of erection that comes in response to pheromones, rather than thoughts.  

After another moment of loaded silence, Bucky raises his head, talking over his own shoulder rather than just face Steve.  “Next time,” he says.  

His eyelashes are thick, and at this angle, they completely shield his eyes from view.

Steve gets up and leaves the room.

 


End file.
